Dark Magic
by FerociousPtaryndactyl
Summary: Bakura Kurokawa seems like an average high school student. But the discovery of shadow magic in his attic will lead him down a path as dark as the shadows themselves. Tender and Puzzle shippings.
1. Chapter 1

Light split the darkness of a white room.

Quietly, under the whispers of evil words and malevolent promises to the dark, blood spilled. This was a glorious rebirth in the night, heart throbbing, gasping with the breath of life restored anew.

The shadowmage slipped out into the night as his victim let out a scream.

* * *

The train slowed and the crowd surged like an incoming tide, jostling Bakura Kurokawa bodily in the small bit of space he'd claimed as his own. He snarled at a person whose hand roamed somewhere it shouldn't have been. A different hand on his shoulder steadied him and steered him through the sliding double doors before they could close behind him.

"Come on. Your aunt's waiting for us."

The voice was crisp and sharp, like the suit his uncle was wearing. But, also like the suit, it was worn out and a bit haggard. The man's face was drawn with age lines and his black hair seemed to grey even as Bakura watched.

Bakura narrowed his eyes, but didn't raise a fuss. The sea of people pressed tightly around him. A thousand expressionless faces going a thousand different directions, with no more regard for him than he for them.

He didn't bother to struggle against them; instead, he elected to let himself be pulled along, tracking the back of his uncle's head, maintaining a set distance as they emerged into the abnormally abysmal, grey August morning.

His aunt was already at the house when they arrived.

"It's finally time," she said with that damned overeager smile, turning a key over in her hands.

Bakura leaned against a street lamp, scowling at the dismal sky. Brewing clouds threatened rain in soft, rumbling tones above their heads. It wasn't the that rain bothered him all too much. He'd grown up just outside London. Rain was second nature.

It was this 'family bonding' thing that was new.

He'd only been in Domino, Japan for three weeks, and he was already sick of it. He'd been doing just fine on his own. The only reason he was here at all was because of a small mistake, an oversight. The plan had been perfect otherwise.

But it was too late to dwell on should-haves and could-haves now. Things could have been worse than getting shipped halfway across the world to live with an aunt and uncle he'd only met twice before. Much worse, given the circumstances.

His only comfort was the knowledge that this situation was only until he turned 18. The age of adulthood in Japan was 20, but at 18, he could return to England and do whatever the hell he wanted. If he kept up his grades, his aunt and uncle would even pay to send him back. One more year.

And at least they were finally moving into something larger. How they'd gotten this, though…

In this area, these weren't just cheap apartments. The houses over here were lovely. The one they stood before now was, perhaps, a bit older and less-maintained than the rest, but it was still leaps and bounds better than the old one-bedroom unit that his aunt and uncle were living in before.

Bakura closed his eyes, waiting. Waiting for his aunt to finish her moment, waiting for the first few raindrops to spill from overbearing clouds and spatter onto his face, waiting for his 18th birthday so he could leave this country forever.

When the "Come on, Bakura," finally came, that was when he finally opened his eyes again, following his relatives at a distance into the new residence, their shoes exchanged for slippers near the door.

He tuned out the self-congratulatory cheers of 'to our new home'. The western-style rooms felt normal to Bakura, but to his aunt and uncle, they were a refreshing change of pace from the traditional style apartment from before.

He cast his critical eye over the interior, the furnishings that came with the house, the woodwork and the paint on the walls, trying and failing to find some real fault with it. Something about this house seemed too good to be true.

His relatives listed amenities that came with the house, the positives of the location, probably the same tired spiel that the realtor gave them: proximity to the station, a quality high school not far away, walking distance from anything they might need. Bakura tuned her out.

They'd been swindled. They had to have been. His aunt and uncle weren't poor, but they weren't particularly wealthy, either. There was no way they could afford this without there being something terribly wrong with it.

He made his way through the house, looking through the kitchen first, then making his way through each of the other rooms. He tugged at doors, testing the hinges. Tapped on walls. Pressed his ear to various surfaces to check the propagation of sound. He jumped on the stairs, which only creaked a little in the middles at odd intervals. The edges were solid and silent. The railing was firm. The construction on the house was solid.

Nothing flimsy or cheaply thrown together. He leaned against the window in one of the rooms, peering out at the street. Something had to be wrong with this place. Things that seemed too good to be true usually were. That was how life had always been, and how it always would be. He left the room to track down his aunt and uncle.

"So, what's wrong with this place?" he asked them, leaning over the sturdy railing.

"What was that Bakura…?" Aunt Aiko asked.

"This place. How is it this cheap? Everything about it is perfect. There's gotta be something wrong with it," Bakura said.

"There is nothing wrong with this house," she insisted.

Bakura nodded. "Right, right. Yes. Then why is it empty? Why hasn't it been snapped up by someone else before us? Did someone die here?" His eyes lit up. "Was there a murder?"

"Bakura!" his aunt snapped, looking properly horrified. "Nothing like that! The previous owners had to leave in a hurry on urgent business in America, and needed to get this house sold as quickly as possible. If we didn't sign right away, it would have been sold to someone else."

Classic marketing trick to prey on the gullible. It seemed like an obvious ploy to him, but maybe it was so plainly obvious that his aunt and uncle had somehow fallen for it. Too late now. Bakura would find out what happened eventually.

"So… I get a room this time, right?" he asked. His uncle smiled at him and stood up, taking the stairs one at a time with the snail's pace of someone with an arthritic knee. His aunt trailed behind.

They walked into the last room Bakura had visited. "How's this for a room?" his uncle asked, smiling. "Better than a futon in the living room, right?"

That it was. A real, honest to god bed, the likes of which Bakura hadn't slept on in years. Even the last few weeks had been spent on a pull out sofa purchased on the cheap from a second-hand shop so that Bakura would have somewhere to sleep.

This room was… well… not entirely unlike the room he'd had when he was young. A bed, although the coverlet was plain white. A desk. A chair. A dresser. Basic things.

It felt obscenely wealthy.

He let both of his backpacks slip gently onto the floor and trailed his fingers over the desk. All of this space was his. Silly, when one thought about it. All of this storage for someone whose entire life fit inside of two backpacks.

Above him, something caught his eye. When he looked up, he noticed a small handle set into the ceiling. He blinked. "What is that?"

"Looks like an attic," his uncle said, frowning at the handle. "Strange. The floorplan didn't mention one…"

"Really? I want to see," Bakura said.

His aunt crossed her arms and shook her head. "We can check it out later. How about we go get some dinner? We can get some noodles from that shop you liked the night you arrived."

Bakura considered the offer for a moment and nodded. "Fine." The redirection was obvious, but the noodle restaurant she referred to was one of the few things Bakura could stomach when he first arrived in Domino.

He cast one last look up at the ceiling before following his aunt and uncle out of the house. And though he made plans to explore it as soon as he returned home, the thought of it slipped from his mind by the time they returned, much later that night.

They'd celebrated the new house with dinner, followed by dessert, followed by a trip to a store where they splurged even further, going so far as to buy a few things for Bakura's new room to personalize it a bit.

It was far from Bakura's mind as he replaced the plain coverlet with one that was deep grey, nearly black, and spread a poster on his wall for a show which he'd started watching since he'd arrived in the country and had decided he rather liked. It wasn't much, but the act was foreign and surprisingly welcoming.

Well. This was still the wrong country. He was still forced to live with his relatives instead of on his own, which he would have preferred. And yes, all of his schooling would be done in Japanese instead of English. But… he did have a bed. So that was new.

He turned his lights off late that night, settling into the covers. The mattress was almost too soft, but he managed to fall into something almost resembling sleep after some time. Hours twisted in nauseating lurches and lulls. The uneasy passage of time had him tossing and turning restlessly, on the brink of wakefulness.

About three AM, a touch of ice over his forehead jolted him fully awake. He stayed perfectly still for a long time, eyes tracking slowly over the room.

For four years, he'd lived by these finely honed senses. They were all that stood between safety and losing every last little thing he'd managed to accrue over his lifetime. He had trusted his life to these senses.

But there was nothing there.

He narrowed his eyes in the gloom of light coming through his window. When he pulled back the covers, he felt a slight chill, more than there should have been. But he still saw nothing but the foreign room.

"It's just nerves. Strange room, strange house, strange country," Bakura muttered. "Something's just wrong somewhere." He stood, searching the empty drawers of the dresser, the desk, even looking under the bed for things unknown that could be causing the nerves.

At one point, he thought he heard a scratching noise, but even that seemed like his imagination. And even it it wasn't, rats and mice were the obvious, simple culprits.

He peered out the curtains, looking out over the desolate street. The moon looked like it might have been full, but wasn't really. Spatterings of stars above cast down their faint glow. He pursed his lips. Just as he suspected. There was nothing.

He slipped out of the room, easing himself silently down the stairs and dodging the creaky spots he'd made note of earlier in the day. The rest of the house was equally empty, save for the snores emanating from the other occupied room. He drank a glass of water, voided his bladder, and returned to his room, grumbling quietly.

He was being ridiculous.

He shut the door behind him, scowling at the floor and stalking over to his bed. Then he froze.

His head very slowly turned.

But there was nothing there. "Fuck," he growled. Something about this was all wrong. Feeling things that weren't there, seeing faces in the shadows where there was nothing.

He shook himself and went back to bed, grumbling and grousing silently to himself as he pulled the covers over himself. But he didn't get back to sleep that entire night. He tossed and turned, but there was no reprieve.

He rose with heavy eyes and a feeling like death that lingered in the back of his mind all day. More hours than Bakura cared to mention were spent shopping for school supplies, all of them for classes that would resume the following day, when the summer break concluded.

The stores were overcrowded, the trains busy as ever, and the long hours of the adventure exhausted him. He wanted to crawl back into bed. He wanted to go back to England.

They bought more than Bakura thought he'd need, doubling the amount of material _things_ in his possession, and didn't get back until much later that day. He lagged behind, lugging the large bags by himself, scowling fiercely at the ground.

"You just moved in, didn't you?"

He glanced to his left. There was an old woman getting into a car, grey hair pulled into a messy bun, face carved deeply with wrinkles. She paused at the car door, frowning.

"Yeah. What about it?" he managed, trying not to drop the bags.

"You shouldn't have done that. That house is cursed."

Bakura eased the bags onto the ground. "Define 'cursed'," he said, crossing his arms. This all had the surreal feel of something out of a B-list horror movie. Luckily, those were the best kind.

"Darkness. Cold. There is death in that house."

"Death…" Bakura mused, smiling. "So someone really did die here."

"Don't smile like that, boy. You can't even begin to understand the gravity of what you've done by moving into that house. What dark forces will begin to act on you and your family. You'd be wise to move out now, before something happens."

"So that was why it was so cheap," Bakura said. Superstitious idiots.

"Tell your family. You must leave this place."

Bakura hummed and continued to smile as he gathered his bags. "I'll let them know, but, well, we only just moved in. I think they'll want to take their chances."

"You're making a mistake if you do," the old woman said, shaking her cane melodramatically at him. Bakura fought the urge to cackle at her. This really was a B-movie!

He walked through the door his aunt had left open. "What took you so long, Bakura?" his aunt asked him.

Bakura grinned at her. "Just chatting with our neighbors is all."

She smiled. "Lovely. I'm glad you're adjusting so well."

Bakura lugged the bags up the stairs and dropped them tiredly into his room. He stared at his bed for a long minute, mulling over the idea of a nap to ease the exhaustion, the lethargy.

But, as soon as he laid down in the bed, he felt the icy touch against his skin once more, sending shivers rocketing down his spine. Something white wavered above him. He blinked, rubbing at his eyes, but the glimmer was gone as quickly as it had come.

He laughed at himself. One mention of a curse and he was imagining ghosties in his room.

He rolled over and settled into a fitful sleep.

In his dreams, he smelled fire. Smoke, yes, but also the scent of wood and steel and flesh burning. Tongues of flame tasted the night sky. He felt blood splashing against his skin. A handle twisted in his fingers.

He snapped awake in cold sweat, breath heaving, clutching at his chest in a panic.

It had been a year since he'd last had a nightmare like that one. He thought they were gone.

"Stupid house," he growled, kicking the covers off and stalking off to the bathroom. Fucking strange house and fucking ghost story stirring up his overactive imagination and dredging up things best left forgotten.

He took a long shower, washing away the memory of the dream, and came back to the room, toweling off his hair.

That was when he heard the scratching again. The rats, or whatever they were.

It was faint. Not noticeable unless you were listening for it, but Bakura's senses were honed sharp as knives. He pulled on a pair of boxers and let the towel hang on his shoulders as he settled into a slight crouch, eyes scanning the room.

"Now what?" he muttered.

He listened closely, trying to pinpoint the exact spot the sound came from. It was almost as though it came from above him. But as soon as the thought crossed his mind, it cut off.

An infestation in the attic? That would explain a lot.

He kept his body low, moving quietly to the middle of the room. The scratching began again for a few seconds before stopping once more. He reached up, struggling to grab the handle that led to the attic and eventually deciding it was too high. He pushed the nightstand towards the middle of the room and climbed atop it, using it as a stair step to reach the handle.

It came open with a dull creak, pulling down steep stairs, nearly like a ladder, attached to the square opening in the ceiling. Listening close for the scratching, he climbed up, finding himself in total darkness. He used his new cell phone's camera as a flashlight to illuminate the area, but the darkness hungrily consumed much of the beam.

Little was left to show where he stood. He managed to find a pull cord hanging from the ceiling, and a quick tug brought a single bare light bulb to life. He let the phone go dark, looking around.

It was almost empty up here. Freezing cold, too, for some reason, a fact that wasn't helped by his state of undress. Slanted ceilings were fitted with exposed rafters and a bit of uncovered insulation. A few boxes gathered dust in the corner. In the still, stale air, cobwebs and dust motes glittered in the dim light.

An unconscious shiver ran down his spine.

There was something horrible up here.

He wasn't sure how he knew. It wasn't a conclusion drawn through logic and reasoning. It was something that he knew instinctively, deep down in the reactionary, animal part of his subconscious. Something he couldn't put his finger on.

The hair on the back of his neck rose. A cold chill ran over the fingertips of his left hand, as though they'd brushed against ice. He clenched his hand into a fist, whirling to look, but there was nothing there. Still, he felt as though he was being watched…

His eyes traced slowly over the room, searching for whatever might have been hidden in the darkness, making that scratching noise. Rats, right? Or some other sort of vermin? He heard the scratching for a short burst, but it was gone before he could do more than pinpoint a general direction.

As he turned back around, something on the floor caught Bakura's eye. He crouched low, fingers trailing along the old wood. It seemed anacronic compared to the rest of the house, at odds with the modernism that seeped into every pore of the downstairs rooms. Older.

Scorch marks burned strange lines along the old wood, faint, occult symbols. His eyes narrowed. He'd seen symbols like this before somewhere, burned in the back of his mind so deeply that he wasn't sure if it was a dream or reality. Seeing them now evoked a hollow feeling within him, deeper than the penetrating cold of the room could reach.

"What is this…?" he muttered, standing back up. He turned in a slow circle, drawing up short at a faint silvery wisp that hovered near the source of the scratching sound. He took a step closer, slowly, silently, focusing all of his attention on the wisp. This thing… he swore this was the thing he saw in that waking instant.

Was this…? Could this be what the neighbor was referring to when she mentioned death?

As he leaned closer to look at it, it suddenly straightened up, revealing a form vaguely reminiscent of a humanoid, only doll-like, scaled down to a foot or so tall. Nothing could really be discerned that could be concretely defined as a feature of the wisp, but something about it seemed human in nature.

As Bakura's eyes followed it in puzzlement, it suddenly darted backwards and then forwards.

"You can see me?" it said in a breathy voice. The words didn't seem to reach the air. They resonated deep in the core of his being, evoking images of bubbles drifting aimlessly through space, windchimes stirring in a void. But there was no question. The words came from the silver wisp.

"What are you?" Bakura demanded. "Tell me!"

The wisp jerked and backed nearly all the way to the wall where it quivered in the darkness, shining with its own immaterial light. "Don't hurt me!" it cried. "Please, don't!"

Bakura recoiled in surprise. "What?"

"Please, I won't do anything to you! I don't mean any harm! Don't send me away!" it pleaded.

"Hey, don't freak out," Bakura said. "It's okay… I think…" He took a cautious step closer, peering down at the frightened thing. He'd never seen anything like it before. At least it seemed more afraid of him than he was of it.

Whatever it was, it was faintly translucent, corporeal enough to see. But not touch, Bakura amended, from the way it passed, unhindered, through a nearby crate. After a moment, it moved to hover a bit lower than eye level a few feet away from him, edging nearer with something that could only be described as hesitance.

Its lack of any discernible facial features made it difficult to be absolutely sure, but Bakura had seen skittish animals before. Not that this was any animal Bakura had ever seen before.

But the question remained: what was it?

"Hey, look, I- You're obviously sentient. Do you have a name?" he asked.

It seemed to look up at him, parting a denser bit of silver the way some people part long hair hanging in their face. "You aren't going to hurt me?" it asked.

He shrugged and shook his head, watching the silvery apparition drift up and down with undisguised fascination. "Not until you give me a reason, I suppose… So... a name. Do you have one?" he asked.

It considered the question for a moment and eventually responded with something that seemed to resemble a head shaking no. "I don't think so. At least, if I have one, I don't know it." It hovered a bit closer to him, coming slowly and then a bit faster. "But… you could give me one."

This threw Bakura for a loop. "What, me?"

It nodded. "You're the first person who's seen me in forever! Please, I want a name!"

"I can't say I'm qualified to-" Bakura began, only to be interrupted by repeated pleas of 'please' and 'just a first name is okay!'. "I don't think I-"

"Please please please," it begged, coming closer suddenly. Bakura stumbled backwards in surprise. "Please please!"

"I- well-" he glanced wildly around the room for inspiration, not entirely certain why he was humoring this mysterious apparition at all. "Uhh, no, not that… No, not that either," he muttered aloud, eyes landing on decomposing cardboard boxes, wooden crates, and the lightbulb above his head.

He paused at the lightbulb, then looked back at the glowing silver wisp.

"Uh… glow? Wisp? Light? No, wait, I know! How does Hikari sound?"

The wisp paused for a second and then circled rapidly around him, cheering gleefully. "Hikari, Hikari, Hikari!" it babbled, brushing up against him every now and again. When it did, he was struck by an icy sensation that came from the contact.

"But, uh, Hikari, if you don't mind me asking, what are you?" Bakura managed.

The wisp slowed and settled somewhere at eye level. "Me?" it said slowly, reluctantly. "Ahaha… well… I'm…"

"Yes?"

"I'm dead. I think."

Bakura grinned. "I fucking called it."

* * *

Bakura Kurokawa seems like an average high school student. But the discovery of dark magic in his attic will lead him down a path as black as the shadows, and awaken the gruesome past he's kept a secret for years.

Completely AU, of course, but it'll have plenty of nods to the source material. Bakura will likely continue to be this level of OOC teen!Bakura for another few chapters until he becomes the monster we all know and love.


	2. Chapter 2

"I did say I think. Not that I was sure…"

The wisp said this tremulously, seemingly vibrating at a frequency that was nearly undetectable to Bakura's eyes. This shaking distorted the image in strange ways and made his head hurt. He winced and clutched his temple.

"You think," he said, disbelievingly.

"Uhm, yes?" it said, as though it was a question. "Well, see, I don't remember dying. Or living, actually. So I'm not sure."

Bakura blinked at the… ghost? Was that what this was? He looked down at his hands and noticed for the first time that they were shaking violently. In fact, much of his body was shaking.

He pulled the towel over his shoulders, trying to warm up, but the damp towel didn't do much but make him colder. His breath ghosted in front of him as Hikari vibrated even faster, until it seemed as though it was still.

"Well. This explains a lot," Bakura puffed, watching his words freeze as they hit the air. A small chuckle escaped, and then suddenly he was laughing so hard he was bent over.

The wisp hovered closer. "Are you okay?" it asked.

He couldn't stop laughing. This was ridiculous! "You're the great and terrible evil in this house?" he cackled. " _You're_ what I was supposed to be afraid of? You're tiny!"

"I- I'm sorry," it said, shrinking slightly. "Am I supposed to be scary? I didn't know. I could- I don't know, I could try to be frightening-" The scratching began again, and Hikari froze in place. "Oh no," it said.

Bakura frowned. "What is that?"

"I don't know, but it isn't good. I know it isn't. Something about it is… wrong."

Bakura studied the flooring again, kneeling back down to look at it closer. "Is it like the marks on the floor?" he asked. Hikari flew down.

The marks had no meaning or sense on a conscious level, nothing he could convey with words or pictures or even begin to relate, but which made perfect sense at a baser level of functioning. Looking at them made bile rise in his throat, made his stomach churn.

Fire stirred in his bones as he looked at them. A spreading warmth lessened the chill. The scratching sounds intensified.

This. This was the evil that his neighbor had spoken of. Bakura was absolutely sure of it.

He turned back to look at the source of the scratching: an ancient, wooden chest locked with a massive, iron padlock.

"I want to open it," Bakura said.

"No! You can't!" Hikari cried. "Something bad will happen!" It tried to step between Bakura and the wooden chest, but he passed through the wisp with nothing more than a passing plummet in temperature where the silvery, insubstantial ghost touched his bare skin.

He pulled at the padlock, but it stayed firm. "Mmm. Solid," he mumbled. Hikari looked relieved. Bakura shivered and turned back.

"Guess you can't open it. Looks like I worried for- hey, where are you going?" Hikari asked as Bakura started to climb down the ladder.

Bakura smirked. "Getting my lockpicks."

"Lockpicks?!" Hikari yelped.

Bakura stepped quickly into a pair of pants, threw a jacket over his shoulders to replace the damp towel, and grabbed the set of picks, holding them between his teeth to free up his hands. He pulled his arms into the sleeves of his jacket as he climbed back up, returning to the dim attic.

"How do you even know how to pick locks?" Hikari said from his shoulder.

Bakura muttered something incomprehensible through the picks, then pulled them out of his mouth as soon as his hands were free. "It's a useful skill."

"Please, don't do this!" Hikari begged, but it was ignored. Bakura knelt in front of the chest once more, unrolling his lockpicks and pulling out two choice tools. He grimaced as he worked.

"Tricky lock," he muttered. The tumblers seemed to be actively working against him. He'd line a few up, and then the rest would seem to slide themselves back to where they'd begun. "Goddamn rust!" He turned the lock over.

He brushed away a thick layer of dust to find another of the symbols etched into the back panel of the padlock. He studied it closer, humming to himself, before going back to work, trying out any method he could think of to crack the lock. Nudging individual tumblers, raking over all of them, fiddling aimlessly.

Each failure served to infuriate him further. He swapped out one of the tools and redoubled his efforts, clearing out the tumblers and trying one final time.

With a final twist, he heard a loud click, letting out a victorious sound as he did so. The padlock sprung open. He tossed it back and grabbed the chest's handles.

He pulled them open gently, waiting for something to happen, some secret mechanism to trigger. But nothing happened.

He brought his cell phone back up to light up the insides, when a rush of darkness suddenly flooded out of the chest, washing over him in a crashing wave of ice.

He yelped and fell backwards, the darkness falling over him like a second skin, buzzing with the intensity of a swarm of enraged bees. He choked on the clouds, and found that he couldn't breathe. He grabbed at his throat. "He-elp-" he gasped.

Hikari was beside itself. Above his head, he could see the wisp flying in circuitous figure eights, but even this was wavering. His vision was growing fuzzy. His head was light. Everything was going dark.

Through the haze overcoming him, one thing rose from deep within. A small stabbing pain grew in intensity, right over his heart, like an icy knife twisting under his skin. It took on shape, but what it was, he couldn't tell. He gasped once more as pain flared up, writhing below his flesh. One hand moved from his throat to his chest, clawing at the center of the pain.

And then his vision cleared. His airways opened, and he could breathe once more. Under his fingers, something felt wet. He pushed himself upright, panting, studying his fingers with abstract curiosity. They were dark and shiny. Bloody. His own blood.

He reached for the chest, fingers scrabbling over the box, staining it red where he touched. He had to see inside it. He had to know what was within. He thrust his hand blindly into the chest, landing on the leather cover of an ancient book. He pulled it out.

 _A Compaendium of Darke Magicks_ was carved into curiously pale leather, the title smeared over with his own blood. It soaked slowly into the bindings. He watched as the blood vanished inside the book.

When it faded away, the pain flared up once more in his chest, coursing through him like a camera flash, and then it was gone. He cringed faintly and groaned, his hand going back to his bleeding chest, but there was no more pain as suddenly as it had come.

"Oh dear, oh thank heavens, you're awake! Are you alright?" Hikari asked, leaning close. It seemed to finally notice that Bakura had moved.

"Fine," Bakura grunted, looking at his hand again. He was still bleeding. Or was he? His skin felt solid. No give, no breaks. Fully healed?

But then, where was the blood coming from? "What do you mean 'awake'?" he asked.

Hikari bounced from side to side. If Bakura didn't know better, he'd have said the little bugger had to pee.

"You've been out for hours. I tried to get your aunt and uncle, but they didn't notice me. I was afraid… so afraid… that you'd died. The last person who tried that did die! I told you, evil! It could have killed you!"

"You could have mentioned that before I opened the box!" Bakura growled.

Hikari shrank again. "I'm sorry, I didn't think about it."

Bakura grunted again, managing to get to his feet, trying to process what he'd just heard. So Hikari wasn't the only death in this house? Would have been nice to know before popping open sketchy wooden chests with stubborn locks.

He grabbed a few of the massive books, hefting them carefully so they wouldn't be ruined by the bit of blood on him.

"I'm getting out of here," he growled.

He extinguished the light and headed down the stairs. It was almost perfectly dark in his room, lit only by the swollen moon. Hikari followed at a distance, and the ambient light brightened up a bit. After a moment's thought, he pushed the ladder up, and it closed the ceiling up with a nearly inaudible squeak.

"So… if you don't mind me asking… what did you find?" it asked slowly. Bakura didn't look at the wisp drifting down through the attic door. He was staring into the mirror with his mouth hanging open in shock.

"Holy shit," Bakura breathed. "Why didn't you say something about my being completely covered in blood? Oh, shit, I'm never going to get this out." He tugged at the jacket, staring at his chest.

His pale skin was slicked over with blood, dark and red and fluid, from the base of his throat to the edges of his boxers and the low-slung jeans. Some of the blood along the edges had only just started to dry and fade to brown. The jacket was stained faintly along the zip, but it was minimal enough, thankfully, that it seemed like it would probably come clean in the wash.

Thank the gods he'd never bothered to zip it, or it would likely be ruined.

So much blood. Bakura never considered himself to be squeamish, but to lose this much blood… it couldn't be healthy. He shouldn't be able to stand right now. He dropped the books on the desk and slid down the stairs into the kitchen, trying to keep from dripping on the floor as he went. Hikari bobbed in the air behind him like a balloon, lighting his way.

He grabbed the roll of paper towels, sat on the countertop, and started cleaning himself off. "Four AM," he grumbled, noticing the time finally. "How does it get to be 4 AM without my noticing?"

"You were out for a long time. A very long time. Your aunt assumed you were out exploring Domino, so she saved some dinner for you. I saw her put it in the fridge if you want it."

"I want it," Bakura said, frowning at his chest. It was still messy and bloody, but as far as he could see, none of the skin was actually broken or even scabbed over. He dampened a paper towel and started to cleanse away the final layer of blood that had smeared itself over his skin. That was when he noticed something even more odd.

A small shape over his heart refused to come clean. He couldn't tell what exactly the symbol was, but it was stained so deeply into his bone-white skin that he couldn't wash it away. He scrubbed harder at the spot, but other than his skin turning a bit flushed around the area, nothing happened.

"Won't come clean," he muttered. Hikari hovered down in front of him and let out a small whispery gasp.

"Oh no. That's not good."

"What is it this time?" Bakura asked. He frowned at the large pile of bloodstained paper towels and pushed them into the trashcan, swiping the damp one over the counter to clean up the reddish smudges. Eh. Good enough.

"That mark was on the box. The evil box. It marked you somehow," Hikari said. "That's dark magic."

"Dark magic," Bakura mused to himself, a wry smile on his lips. "Magic isn't real. Just a superstition kept by old housewives and children. It's probably just a scab or scar or something. It'll go away soon."

He slid off the counter. Inside of the fridge was a container of leftovers with his name scrawled on a post it note. He grabbed it and a pair of chopsticks and returned back upstairs, following the light provided by Hikari to get silently back into his room. He closed his door behind him.

He scarfed in the barely lit room, devouring the food in quick, hungry bites. When he was finished, he sidled back over to the mirror. His reflection leered at him.

It was easier to see the scar now that the blood was cleaned away. But it was as Hikari had said: it was such a curious shape. A bit suspicious. But it could have been worse.

As it was, it was in the shape of an eye directly over his heart. Around this eye was a thin circle, at the bottom of which there were five identical diamond shapes like pendants hanging free.

The sheer coincidence that a scar had naturally occurred in this shape was difficult to believe, but it was still more likely than Hikari's answer of magic. Still… there was the question of the books he'd found…

He hefted a weighty tome from the top of the stack, which was unquestionably the largest book of the four. Unlike the book he'd grabbed in the attic, this one was bound in black, slightly stained leather that was cracked and moldering with age. The pages were yellow and thick and ragged on the edges. Some looked rather like blood or some other sort of less-than-savory fluid had spilled onto the pages.

 _Necronomicon_.

"I've heard of this book before," Bakura said, turning it this way and that. "Lovecraft. It's fiction. Complete BS. I'll give that someone put a lot of work into this for a fake." He started to open it, when Hikari let out a sudden shriek.

"Don't!" he cried.

Bakura paused. "Don't tell me you actually believe this."

"I do," Hikari said very seriously. It bobbed up and down slightly. "Please, don't go through these books. Something even worse will happen than what already has."

Bakura rolled his eyes and put the book back on his desk. He set _The Picatrix_ aside and picked up the still unwieldy, but comparatively slimmer, _Munich Manual_. "And this is…?"

"A book on demons," Hikari said.

"And you know that... how?" Bakura asked, one eyebrow lifting slowly at the wispy ghost.

The ghost made a gesture that seemed almost suggestive of a shrug. "I don't know," it said.

Bakura scowled and put down the demon book. "Of course you don't. Anyway, what exactly are you?"

"I told you, I think I'm dead," Hikari said.

"I gathered that much," Bakura replied. "But are you, I don't know, a ghost? A spirit? Something… lingering?" He smiled and hefted the _Munich Manual_ once more. "A demon?"

Hikari shivered. "You should take this more seriously. I was human once. I know that much. But… I don't know more than that. I don't remember my name, or what I looked like, or where I lived, or even when. I know it's been a while, though. Things have changed a bit since I… ahem. Passed."

Bakura leaned forward. "How can you tell?"

"The television, mostly. The way people speak when they walk into a house. The shows they watch. The things the people do. I can't leave the house, so I'm a bit limited on what I can do. But I can do that much," Hikari said.

"One more question. Gotta know. It's killing me a little, this not knowing thing," Bakura said.

Hikari nodded. "Of course. What is it?"

"Are you a guy or a chick?"

Hikari somehow seemed to look affronted. "Male, of course. Isn't it obvious?"

Bakura shook his head, a crooked smile on his face. "Eh, not really. But I was feeling a little weird calling you an it, so I thought I'd ask."

Hikari bristled slightly, but then calmed with a deep breath. "I guess it isn't that obvious, is it?" he said, frowning down at his form.

The ephemeral silver tendrils flowing from the main, humanoid shape were vaguely suggestive of hair, or maybe they were Cthulhu-like tentacles coming from an eerie structure resembling a head but lacking a face. Bakura didn't know. He doubted he'd ever be able to tell. Nothing was actually defined on Hikari's figure. It was like a rough sketch, but with too many lines tracing over each part to the point where nothing was left.

Hikari sighed. "I guess you'll be going to sleep, now, won't you? You have school in the morning, after all."

Bakura laughed humorlessly. "Ha. Me? There's no way I can sleep at a time like this. I love this occult shit. I'm gonna read something. Only two hours till I have to wake up anyway, so there's no sense in trying to sleep now."

"Please, I think it's a bad idea."

"Nonsense. It'll be fun. C'mon, we can read it together. Maybe find out what you are...?" He trailed off, dragging the _Compaendium of Darke Magicks_ off the desk and into the bed.

He looked at the cover and frowned. He had thought the leather bindings had been old and a shade of dingy off-white. But the book looked much newer than it had seemed in the dark, its pages jagged but crisp, as though freshly cut, and the leather was supple and red as a fresh rose.

On the front, embossed in black, was the same symbol which marked his chest. He ran his fingers over the cover.

"I suppose... a small peek might not do much more damage… In the name of research, of course," Hikari muttered, meandering over to Bakura's shoulder. From the light he threw off, Bakura had no problems opening the book and skimming over the table of contents.

"All in English," Bakura commented, running a finger down the page numbers listed at the edges. The font was handwritten and archaic, but very obviously not Japanese characters.

"Is that a problem?"

"Nah. I'm more used to English than Japanese. This works out well for me. I just wonder what all of these books are doing here, written in English... It's a bit strange. Say, you can read this, can't you?"

"Of course. Why is that a question- oh. I see. I must be able to speak English, or at least read it, if I can understand the words," Hikari said with a slight, nod-like bob.

Bakura grinned. "Well? Let's get started."

As they worked their way through the introduction, the sky began to lighten. Dawn came, and the sun rose with the sounds of an alarm clock going off in the next room. His uncle stirred. Bakura didn't move.

His eyes tracked over the book, completely enraptured by words contained within.

Even Hikari had fallen silent in favor of deciphering the words before them, piecing together the vague, meandering prose to find meaning.

The very words seemed poisoned as Bakura read them, but he found himself inexplicably drawn into the world which it spun from thousands of black threads. It sounded like fiction, no, it was fiction, but even so, Bakura couldn't help but keep turning pages, insatiably thirsting to know what darkness the next paragraph contained.

This world, it read, was steeped with a shadowy magic known only to a select few. Powers greater than human comprehension resting just beyond the edges of the plane which humans inhabit. It spoke of an ancient history reaching back to Egypt and further back still, which would be recounted fully in the very first chapter of the book.

It spoke of dimensions unreachable to all but the most powerful of mages and arcanists, of demons and souls split from human shells, thriving with human life but devoid of any means of communication with those who were not what the book called 'shadow touched'. As for the 'shadow touched', these were humans which were-

A shriek from below startled him from the book before he could read more.

"Bakura! Oh gods, is this blood?!"

Bakura groaned. "Of course," he muttered. He stretched with a soft vocalization and set the book aside on his bed. "Excuse me a minute, Hikari."

He stuck his head outside his door.

"Yes!" he yelled down. "Don't worry about it, I'm fine! Just… nicked my hand on the way in! Stupid mistake, I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

"Bakura, get down here now!" she yelled.

He glared at Hikari. "I shouldn't have to deal with this."

Hikari wavered back and forth. "They're worried about you."

"They shouldn't be," he growled.

He looked down at the bloodspattered jacket and the scarlet mark which sat slightly to the left of the midpoint between his pectorals, and he quickly shed the jacket in favor of a loose black tee. The shirt covered any hint of blood on his pants, so he figured it wasn't a big deal to leave the jeans as they were.

He threw a withering glare at the mirror. A little pale, but then, he always was. At least his eyes were bright. Yesterday, the reddish brown had been dull and listless, exhausted. Then again, he'd never felt quite as awake as he did now. Quite as… alive.

His blood felt hot, and though he'd barely gotten any sleep the last two nights, he was firing at all cylinders. He licked his lips and snarled at his reflection, liking the savage gleam of his pointy canine teeth.

He rolled his shoulders and stalked out of the room.

"What is all this blood?" Aunt Aiko demanded. She held the lid of the trashcan and pointed emphatically at the can's contents, as though gesturing harder and more furiously would convey the point more efficiently.

"I told you," he drawled, "I nicked my hand a bit. It bled, I cleaned it up. It isn't a problem anymore."

She didn't look convinced. "And anyway, where were you last night? I let you run around at night back at the old apartment because I thought that it made you less homesick, and because nobody looked twice at anyone. But we talked about this. We're in a real home now. What are the neighbors going to think?"

"Fuck what the neighbors think," Bakura muttered, slouching back towards the stairs.

"Bakura!" she snapped. He paused and looked back at her. "We don't use that kind of language in this house."

"We don't, but I do," he said. He turned back around and started up the stairs.

"And where do you think you're going?" Aunt Aiko snapped.

He didn't even pause. "Getting ready for school. I have to go to that, remember?"

He heard a shout of "Bakura, get back here!", but he ignored it.

Hikari was resting on his desk when he returned. "She's going to be furious with you," he said dully.

Bakura shrugged. "Don't care." He stepped out of the jeans and pulled on the uniform on over his black tee. "So, I noticed that Aiko didn't see you down there. What's up with that?"

"I told you, they can't see me. Nobody ever does. Except for you," Hikari said.

"Except for me. And that person who died from the box."

"No. He never saw me. Just tried to get into the box. I suppose he wasn't meant to."

"So I'm the only one?" Bakura asked, grinning.

Bit of an ego stroke, that. It was pretty cool to be the only one who could see the ghost in your attic. So. If Bakura was the only one who could see Hikari… and probably the only one who could hear him as well…

"So I could bring you to school with me and no one would know?" His grin widened. Oh, the things he could do with an extra set of eyes…

Hikari moved slowly side to side, as though shaking his head. "I'm trapped in this house. I can't get more than twenty or thirty feet away from the box. I would if I could, though. Believe me. I'd love to see your high school."

"Shame," Bakura said. "Maybe we'll figure something out later."

"Maybe," Hikari said sadly, sinking closer to the floor. He perked up suddenly. "Oh, no! You're going to be late for your classes! You need to leave!"

Bakura groaned. "So what if I'm a little late? I'll blame it on the trains. I didn't grow up in Japan, so I'm not used to them. They have to accept that excuse, don't they? Or maybe I can just not show up. Be nice to read more of that book."

Hikari pouted. "Please, Bakura, will you go to school? I want to know what it's like. You have to go and tell me all about it!"

"I don't have to do anything," Bakura shot back, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. He leaned against the wall, casting a longing look at the books.

For a bit of fiction, the lore looked like it was shaping up to be pretty elaborate. Only 3/4 of the way through the introduction, and already there were hints of thousands of named demons, circles of hell, and magic spells. Alone, any one of those things would have been enough to merit Bakura's undivided attention. Together?

It was a cocktail of distraction.

"Maybe I could just bring the books with me…" he said, going for the _Compaendium_. He tried to force it into his bag, but it wouldn't fit amongst the clutter and other books inside. He snorted and threw it back onto his bed. "Fine, don't fit," he grumbled.

"Probably for the best," Hikari said. "What if something happened to it?"

"I would lose good reading material, that's what," Bakura said. He slung his bag over his shoulder and started for the door.

"Wait," Hikari said. He flew close to Bakura, then back towards the books. "Maybe… maybe you should hide them."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Just… I think you need to keep them safe. Not where your aunt and uncle can find them."

Bakura nodded. "True… They wouldn't like these if they found them…" he said, dropping the bag. "Superstitious morons."

He pushed the nightstand back under the attic door and pulled the handle down. In two trips, he lugged all of the books back up into the crawlspace where the chest was hidden, tucking them back into the oaken box he'd found them in.

"There. Nice and safe," he said, closing the doors. His hand landed on the open padlock, and he cast it a critical eye. "I thought I closed this…"

"You did," Hikari said. "I told you, black magic!"

"Black magic my arse," Bakura scoffed, locking the chest back up. He turned back and started to clamor back down the stairs, closing the handle once more. "There. No one can get to them but me, and I'll just pick the lock again when I come home. Better safe than sorry."

"Good," Hikari said.

Bakura watched the handle settle into the groove in the ceiling. His lips turned down. He'd need to find a more efficient way of getting into the attic than pushing the nightstand under it every time… One problem at a time, though.

Bakura grabbed his bag with a sigh. Hikari's light brightened suddenly. "Good luck on your first day at school, Bakura! Have fun!"

"I won't," Bakura replied. And he didn't.

* * *

 **Figured I'd try and update once or twice a week. And hey, if you liked this, give it a fave, a follow, or a review! It's always appreciated and means a lot.**


	3. Chapter 3

For some reason, his ears were ringing.

He couldn't really explain it. It had started shortly after he left the house, and it got slowly worse the further he got. His mind jumped to the books for reasons he couldn't explain, and to the words inside of the _Compaendium_.

Shadow touched.

It wouldn't leave his mind. It buzzed there, swarming over his thoughts in dark clouds, polluting his thoughts with vague musings inspired by those stupid books. If only he'd gotten to finish that paragraph before having to leave. Or had the forethought to snap a few pictures of the pages of the book so that he could read it at school.

Damn. He should have thought of that sooner.

After several train stops and what could have potentially been a colossal mistake in train choice, Bakura managed to find the right place to get off at and started walking in the direction of the school building, pawing absently at his ear as the ringing cut off.

The sound was gone, but the thoughts remained. And in this mess of thoughts, a realization slowly came over him. He stopped in his tracks outside of the school gates, ignoring the surging sea of students flooding into the campus.

He had mocked magic. Joked about occultism. All standard fare, really, as far as Bakura was concerned. He only believed in what he could see. But the entire night, he'd been speaking with an ethereal being only he could see, and he didn't even question it once.

He'd had so many opportunities to stop and ask just what the hell was going on, but the idea hadn't even occurred to him until just now. In the moment, it had felt so natural. Of _course_ this strange, silvery creature was completely normal.

For it to be otherwise would be to assume that Bakura was less than completely normal, and while he knew that was true, he didn't think he was the type to imagine something like Hikari. If he wanted to create fictitious ghouls haunting his attic, he was pretty sure he'd make them gut-wrenchingly terrifying. At the very least, there would be a lot more blood involved than there was.

Bakura could mock the books all he wanted. People loved to create fake things like this, these Necronomicons and Munich Manuals. Their contents were probably a combination of creative writing and occult fanaticism. A fun read, probably. Bakura doubted it'd end up being more than that.

But Hikari's very existence, now that he considered it, was a threat to the assumption that everything was banal and normal. Hikari was… real. That alone should have stopped him in his tracks and made him think. And now here he was, mind full of words and phrases and stories ripped straight from an occult dream, wondering…

What if more than just Hikari was real? Nonsense. Hikari was a one-off thing. Ghosts could be real without there being demons and magic and fairies and other bullshit like that.

But as he started walking once more, his mind slipped back to that padlock. He'd picked tricky locks before, some with large numbers of pins, or strange arrangements of the tumblers. But he couldn't remember a lock ever actively working against him.

The lock hadn't just been difficult. It was almost as though it hadn't wanted to be solved. It had gone through eventually, but something that old and simple should have only taken a minute or two, max.

And after that whole ordeal, after he'd locked it up and thrown it to the other side of the room, it had appeared right there beside the chest, open, waiting.

He dragged his fingers roughly through his hair, scowling. He wasn't seriously thinking about this, was he? The guys back home would shit a brick if they knew Bakura was even considering the existence of the supernatural and paranormal.

But then again, they also never thought Bakura would move to Japan, and they certainly didn't expect one of his plans to fail. Unexpected happenstance was becoming a real pain in Bakura's ass, and he was getting sick of it.

Fuck it. When he got home, he was going to prove to himself that all of the contents of the books were bullshit, and as soon as he did that, he was going to be able to relax and enjoy them for the works of fiction that they were, regardless of whether that god damned ghost was a ghost or not.

He straightened his jacket. He still needed to get checked in and find his class, which was entirely determined by his answers to the Entrance Exam (which he at the very least passed, considering he was allowed in). He looked over at one of the wall-mounted clocks and sighed. Somehow, he'd managed to be right on time. Damn.

* * *

If there was one thing that Aunt Aiko could have mentioned before shipping him off to school, it was the ridiculous rules about appearances. The slipper thing, Bakura wasn't too fond of, but at least he knew well enough before coming in to trade out his shoes for the slippers they'd bought yesterday.

What he hadn't known was that dyed hair was not allowed. Technically, this not a problem for Bakura. Except for the fact that it led to a lengthy debate with administration about whether or not his white hair was a real color or came from a bottle.

After producing photographic proof in the form of his aunt's facebook wall (where documentation of every last event in every relative's life was recorded dutifully, including old pictures of his parents' wedding day and from their funeral service) that he had, indeed, inherited the unique color, he was allowed to keep his hair as it was. Although, ironically enough, they advised him to dye his hair black. This was somehow not a violation of the rules.

Bakura asked him if all of their policies were hypocritical like this. They glared at him and spoke icily. It was a great first impression all around.

After this lovely little talk, they gave him unhelpfully vague directions to a room number they'd scrawled on the top of the piece of paper he was supposed to present to his teacher. He didn't ask them to elaborate. They didn't see the need to do so.

He left with a small smirk. He considered this a victory won.

Finding the room was easy enough, but he didn't go in right away. He lingered in the hallways, making himself comfortable leaning against a window. He used this as an opportunity to leer at anyone who stared at him and study the flow of people.

He watched the way they referred to each other, the way they spoke. There was a bit of slang and phrasing that wasn't textbook or the way he'd been taught growing up, but as long as he kept track of what and how they said things, he figured he'd pick up on the mannerisms soon enough.

And in a way, it wasn't entirely different from a high school anywhere else. Same teenagers, though they spoke another language. Same cell phone obsessions, although slightly amplified. People stared at him more here, but that was expected, not surprising.

They traveled in packs, socialized till the last moment, and flocked to classrooms before it was too late.

Finally, when he was a full sixty seconds late, he decided he'd waited long enough. He headed into the room, passing the note to the teacher as he passed. The teacher, a youthful looking man dressed a little more formally than the other teachers, smiled at him. Bakura barely resisted the urge to scowl.

The classroom quickly fell silent, not necessarily out of respect, but out of sheer curiosity. One by one, voices tapered off as they noticed the strange, white-haired guest in the room who wore their uniform, and who certainly hadn't been in class at the start of the year. Summer vacation had just ended; however, unlike in England, this was not the start of the school year.

Classes started back in spring. Which meant Bakura was showing up in the middle of term, and wasn't that just the most awkward time to start at a new school.

Naraki-sensei's brilliant solution to diffuse this situation was to have Bakura introduce himself. Bakura couldn't think of a worse idea.

He looked out at the twenty odd students in the room with him, wondering if they thought this was as pointless and awkward as he did. "Hey. My name's Bakura Kuro-" he coughed and made a face. Way to go, Kurokawa. Fucking things up already, and he was only eighty four seconds into the school day. "Kurokawa Bakura."

A month, and he was still struggling with the name thing.

The class was expressionless. Not welcoming, but not hostile either. Tired, mostly. Unlike Bakura, they probably rolled out of bed ten minutes before class started or something equally enviable.

Naraki-sensei clasped his hands together and smiled. "Would you like to tell the class where you're from and why you've transferred here?" he said, as though speaking to a class of elementary school students rather than to near-adults.

Bakura's face twitched slightly. Keeping an outright glare off of his face was harder than he'd expected, and Naraki wasn't making the task any simpler. Life's just a game, he told himself silently. Play along while the cards are shit, and eventually, you'll be dealt a hand you can win with. Just keep a straight face and bluff like there's no tomorrow.

Bakura took in each of the faces of his classmates in quick succession. "England. I'm here because people can't keep their noses out of my business." He couldn't help himself. He threw a thinly veiled glare at Naraki-sensei, who pretended not to notice.

"Thank you, Mr. Kurokawa. You may take a seat in the open desk near the window." Bakura rolled his eyes and slouched his way to one of the two open seats.

Naraki-sensei opened up a math textbook, ready to begin the delayed class, when the classroom door opened. A boy with wild, multicolored hair sprinted into the room, panting and finally resting his hands on his knees, faintly doubled over. His uniform was ruffled from his run. Bakura wondered vaguely how _his_ hair had been allowed.

The boy weakly passed a crisp note to Naraki-sensei. "I'm sorry... I'm late..." he panted. "Got lost... Missed the train..."

"You're just fine, but I do hope you'll be on time from here on out," Naraki-sensei said. Bakura frowned. Was it just him, or did there seem to be a hint of malice in those words, lurking under the smile?

"I promise!" the boy said cheerfully, straightening up. He was absolutely diminutive, easily a head shorter than Bakura. Probably more, if Bakura ever wanted to actually find out for real, which he doubted would happen.

Naraki-sensei smiled once more at his class, who looked placidly back at him. "It looks as though our second new student has arrived. Would you care to introduce yourself?"

"Good morning! My name is Motou Yugi! I'm so glad to be in your class!" The boy bowed low, grinning from ear to ear.

"And where are you from?" Naraki-sensei prompted.

"Oh, sorry!" The boy bowed and flushed in embarrassment. "I used to attend a school just outside of Battle City. I'm taking care of my grandpa, so I transferred here!"

"Wonderful," Naraki-sensei said. He inclined his head towards Bakura. "You can take the open seat beside our other new student, Kurokawa Bakura. Now. Let's get started on Riemann Sums. Open your textbooks to page 89-"

Bakura watched through narrowed eyes as Yugi walked past him to settle in the desk immediately behind Bakura. Kid was too damned happy. Whatever his mental defect, it would get annoying very quickly. Bakura could already tell.

* * *

The day dragged on longer than the schedule would have seemed to suggest. The morning was excruciating. First came the math lesson, followed by chemistry. At least the lunch his aunt made for him was good.

While he ate, he felt a finger press into his shoulder blade. He ignored it, glowering down at his lunch. The finger buried itself in his shoulder again, and then once more. His eyebrow twitched.

"What?" he asked, glaring back.

Yugi smiled brightly up at him, extending a hand. "Hello, Kurokawa-san. I'm Motou Yugi! Looks like we're both new here. I didn't hear where you came from. If you don't mind me asking…"

"I do."

He turned back and continued to eat. Yugi leaned forward. "Come on, Kurokawa-san! Don't be grouchy!"

"Grouchy?" Bakura asked incredulously. What was he, a five year old with a temper?

"Yeah, grouchy! I don't mean to be rude, but you don't look like you're from around here, and I was really curious."

"Nose out of my business," Bakura snapped, clicking his chopsticks together with an irritated little flick of his fingers. Maybe he was a five year old with a temper.

"Aww, come on, Kurokawa-san! Everyone else got to hear. I came in late," Yugi said with a pitiful little pout. His lower lip jutted forward.

Bakura had to physically keep himself from punching that goddamned pout off of that kid's baby face.

"If I tell you, will you leave me alone?" he asked through gritted teeth. Yugi nodded. "England. My mother was British, my father was from Tokyo. And yes, I'm only half Japanese. Happy, Motou?"

"Ooh, so scary," Yugi chirped. His eyes were big and purple and wide with excitement. Bakura glared again and turned back around. "So I was wondering, since we're both new, would you like-"

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Motou," Bakura ground out, teeth clenched. His expression was fit to kill when he turned back. "I don't want friends. I don't need friends. I like being alone. And I especially like it when meddling, annoying brats keep their snot noses out of my business. Understand?"

Yugi leaned back, blinking at Bakura. "Gosh, I'm sorry, Kurokawa-san. You've had it rough, haven't you? But that's okay. I'm not upset. I'll just let you cool off," Yugi said. He smiled that thrice-damned happy-go-lucky grin once more. "Sorry to pester you like this."

Bakura snorted into his lunch. "Whatever." He couldn't help but feel as though, somehow, Yugi had managed to win this one. And for reasons he couldn't quite explain, that pissed him right off.

* * *

"Why were you so mean to him?"

Hikari stirred a bit from where he had pooled himself into a dip in the blankets, resembling a wind-stirred silver puddle.

Bakura glared. "Well, he was being a pain in the arse. That, and... Hell. There's something wrong with that Motou kid."

Bakura, leaning back precariously in his desk chair, wobbled a bit and straightened himself out. He kicked his feet back up onto the desk. His fingers resumed their languid movements over the cover of the books, as they'd done earlier while he relayed the highlights and lowlights of the day to Hikari. The little ghostie wanted to know about _everything._ The people, the classrooms, the lessons, the color of the tiles on the floors of the bathrooms.

Bakura answered the endless questions to the best of his abilities, but his details of other the students were… sparse, much to Hikari's displeasure. All of them except for that goddamn Yugi, who Bakura could see being a problem later on.

"You didn't have to be cruel," Hikari admonished him. "He just expected to find a kindred spirit in you. When he finds his own friends, I'm sure he'll never bother you again, if that's what you want."

"Why do you sound so sulky?" Bakura asked. He watched the silver puddle lighten. Interesting. Wisps could blush. Or at least, Hikari could.

"No reason."

Bakura stared closer at the wisp, hoping he was looking at the north end rather than the south. "Hmmm... You're jealous, aren't you?"

"No!" Hikari said indignantly. The silver color lightened further. "Maybe..." he added, softer.

"Well, if I could bring you to school, I would. It'd be easier to just show you than to explain all of this stuff. Have you even tried leaving before?" Bakura asked.

Hikari rose up a bit. "Yes. It... Doesn't go well. I- well, just watch."

He took on his humanoid shape once more and drifted towards the window, hesitating. Bakura stood with a faint groan and pulled back the curtains to watch.

Hikari wavered a second longer, looking back once at Bakura before letting out a deep breath. He passed through the window pane and made it maybe two or three feet before freezing in place.

An arc of black light ripped across Bakura's vision, striking Hikari like a thunderbolt cast down from the heavens by a vengeful god. Hikari screamed, and the lights above Bakura's head flickered. The power all down the block wavered and then returned.

Shadows rose from Hikari like smoke, and he whimpered faintly as he was whipped back through the window by some invisible force. He spun head over heels through the air, passing through glass and wall alike in the direction of the chest, until he eventually drifted back into the room.

Hikari's pale silver color was darker, as though burnt. He was shaking.

"Shit, I didn't think it'd be that bad," Bakura said.

Hikari collapsed back into a puddle at the foot of Bakura's bed, trembling.

"Y-yeah. It isn't fun. I can sometimes get farther, but it's even harder and more painful. But... now you can see… It's okay. I'll just stay... Here... Forever..."

"Fuck that," Bakura drawled. He grabbed the _Compaendium_. Real or not, there was always a possibility that it held a nugget of useful information. "We're gonna figure this out. And then, you're gonna go outside."

Hikari stopped shaking. "Really?" He asked.

Bakura considered it for a moment and nodded. "Yeah. How hard can it be?" He thumbed through the book, glancing at the illustrations.

He tried not to think about how this was really just a test for these books. Finding nothing helpful to the situation wouldn't mean all that much. But if he found anything... Hell, if he found a picture or a situation resembling this one...

Either the author had gotten lucky, or there was something else at work.

He skimmed over text and glossed over the images, trying to compare them to legends and stories he'd heard before.

A lot of it seemed like fairly standard occult practices, the chanting, the circles, the squiggly symbols. Nothing really suited to the situation at hand.

The pictures were dark and lurid. Most of them were rough sketches done with a slant-tipped fountain pen in the margins of the book or in gaps between the text, the image unbelievable without the context within the blocks of handwritten prose.

There were strange beings with tentacles and fangs, horned beasts and creatures that seemed human but bore infernal adornments of a beastial, ferine nature: claws and forked tails and razor teeth. Diagrams of complicated circles inscribed inside with many-pointed stars and foreign pictograms of a long-lost language.

Nothing that resembled the small, harmless Hikari that panted from the foot of his bed, wheezing and coughing pitifully. His eyes darted up every now and again, although he wasn't sure why. The need to do so was alien in nature, but entirely irresistible.

Whatever this need was, it abated gradually as the color of the puddle returned to its usual hue, and the breathy, chime-like voice slowed its insistent pants. Bakura found it easier to focus on the content within.

But despite the quick pace at which he turned pages, the ruffle of old, yellowed pages filling the air with rhythmic swipes, progress was painstakingly slow. The book was deceptively long.

"This isn't working," he groaned. "I'm not finding squat. Why can't there just be a simple little message at the front of the book that says something like, 'Oh, just use salt like in the movies', or…"

He paused. Hikari had snapped up into the air at those words, staring at him with eyes that Bakura couldn't discern from the rest of Hikari's anatomy, a small 'OH!" coming from that direction.

"What?" he asked. He drummed his fingers on the wood as Hikari started to bounce left and right.

"Salt!" Hikari cheered. "Salt, salt salt! I remember!"

"Yess…?" Bakura said. "Care to elaborate?"

"Yes! I remembered! I can't move through salt! A ring of salt traps me inside and I can't leave it!"

"And that means… Oh," Bakura said, his eyes suddenly widening. "Oh. Oh, I see." A smile spread slowly across his face.

"Yes! YES YES YES!" Hikari cheered. He whirled through the air, spinning corkscrews around Bakura's head.

"But will it work?" Bakura asked.

Hikari paused his whirling, but he wasn't quite capable of holding completely still. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean," Bakura said, "that there's no guarantee that this'll work. Even if you can't move through salt, who's to say that you won't still be stopped? Is the salt or the house more powerful?"

Hikari shivered. "I… I don't know." He slowly drooped. "No… what if this doesn't work? I-"

"Hey," Bakura said, looking at Hikari where he thought eyes might have been. "Let's just try it. Make a mobile salt ring. Maybe it'll work. And if it does, we can revise the design a bit so it's easier to carry around. A plate with salt on the rim should work, right? Come on, let's try it."

He hopped out of the chair and started down the stairs, skidding to a stop as he reached the kitchen. His aunt was in there already, although she had yet to notice him. He glowered at the door.

How would he do this? Brave the kitchen, grab the plate and salt, and waltz out with no explanation as to what he was doing? And then later, he would have to deal with her superstition-addled questions, and have to come up with some sort of excuse about why he was doing odd things. No, there had to be a better way…

He watched her move back and forth between the stovetop and the fridge. The salt was already on the counter in easy reach. The plates were on the other side of the kitchen. He sized up his odds and made a quick decision. Nothing for it.

He slipped in, ducking behind the counter until he could hear her stirring something. He poked his head up. Aunt Aiko was facing the pot, paying him no mind. He grabbed the salt shaker and a nearby cooking tray that presented a better opportunity than the plates, and he slid back out of the kitchen. She never heard a thing.

He set it up outside on his front porch. He unscrewed the salt shaker and dumped a generous measure onto the tray. With his fingers, he pushed and prodded the salt pile until it roughly resembled a circular line.

"There. Let's try this," he said, looking at Hikari with a grin.

"I can't get in there. Break the line for a moment. Just a little, though."

He frowned. Of course, Hikari couldn't cross the salt to get in without the line being broken and reformed. But how much was enough? He dragged his finger through the salt line to make a path. "How broken does it need to be?"

"That's plenty," Hikari said. He slipped between the lines, settling himself comfortably inside of the circle. Bakura reformed the enclosure.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

Hikari hesitated. "Uh…"

"No time to back out now!" Bakura said. He stood up, bringing the tray with him. He kept his movements fluid enough to keep from disturbing the salt. Hikari remained suspended above the tray, so it was good so far.

Hikari glanced around for a moment, whimpering briefly before nodding. "Okay. Yes. Let's do it. I… I want to see beyond this house. Let's try it. The boundary is two feet from here. If you cross that… Well…"

Bakura nodded, sizing up the distance and walking right up to the edge. "3…"

"Oh, no, don't count down, please," Hikari shuddered, starting to quiver again.

"2…" Hikari tensed. Bakura stepped over the line. "1. Hey look, you aren't smoking."

Hikari was still shaking, cringing almost, but looked up with halting motions. His body turned inside of captivity, slowly taking in the new perspective.

"I- I'm not?" he said. "I can still feel it… it's like a weight on me, pushing down on me from all directions. It… it kind of hurts."

"Are you sure this is the line?" Bakura asked, glancing up and down the street.

One person was walking down the road, but other than that, the street was nearly empty. Good. As it was, the one person was giving him a funny look. Bakura glanced down at himself and stifled an amused snort. He probably looked mad, talking to himself and carrying a circle of salt on a baking tray.

Hikari nodded. "I'm sure it's the line. This is… this is great! Amazing!" Hikari started to bob slightly up and down, but he was still cringing slightly. Bakura gave him a skeptical look. The enthusiasm seemed slightly forced.

"You're sure?" Bakura asked, one eyebrow lifting. Hikari nodded, and then let out a sudden strangled whimper, which cut off as soon as it started. He curled in on himself. "You don't look so sure."

"I- I'm sure, I- I'm fine, I-" Hikari stuttered, curling up more and more, beyond the realm of possibility for human flexibility. Bakura stepped back over the line once more, and Hikari sighed with relief.

"Right."

"Heheh," Hikari said weakly. "Well, it sort of worked."

Bakura nodded. He broke the line a tiny bit, curious as to how small of a gap in the salt Hikari could fit through, and Hikari slipped through the less than centimeter wide gap without a problem. Bakura dumped the tray of salt with a tight grin. Good to know.

He started back for his front door with a shrug.

"So, on a scale of one to ten, how bad was it? Low enough to go to school?"

"Well…" Hikari muttered as Bakura left the tray on the table near the door and started for his room. "Actually, it might have been a six or seven. But considering that it normally is a 14, it's much better than it was."

Bakura hummed and shut the door. He pulled the _Compaendium_ out of its hiding spot under his notebooks. "Well, salt sort of works. Can you think of anything else that might help? Maybe if we doubled it up with other things, we can reduce that number down to two or three, maybe even get rid of it."

"Really? You'd do that?" Hikari asked.

Bakura gave a nod and kicked his feet back up onto his desk. "Sure. Nothing like a problem to take up your time. And you're the first interesting thing about this place. You and these books, anyway. Gives me something to take my mind off of how fucking awful this place is. Can't wait to get out of here in a few months..."

He hadn't had anything to occupy his mind in weeks, and it was taking a toll on his temper. He lived his life absorbed by his whims, and all of them were stolen violently from him when he was shipped across the ocean. But maybe he could find a new little puzzle to play with, something new to obsess over for the coming months.

"You think you have it bad…" Hikari muttered. He drifted lower, brushing the top of the desk. "You can go to school and wherever else you please. I'm trapped in here."

Bakura harrumphed. "Well, if it's such a problem for you, help me skim. And anyway, you're not trapped here. You're trapped near the box. I think. I'll just bring it with me when I leave. Gods know these books are damn fascinating, and I'm sure as hell not leaving them to rot in that attic up there."

Hikari seemed to sparkle. It was blindingly bright. Bakura winced and covered his eyes.

"Eh! Too bright! Dim it down a bit, kid!"

Hikari eventually dimmed enough to look at him, if still slightly to the left to avoid looking directly at him. "Oh, Bakura! That's amazing!"

"Calm down, I just want to figure out what's with these books. Find out if they're real or not. And you're related to them somehow. So come one, let's figure this out, alright?"

"Of course, Bakura!" Hikari hummed delightedly.

* * *

 **Do... Do you guys want any shippings? I could probably throw a few in here if there was some interest in them.** **What pairs do you like, or want to see?**


	4. Chapter 4

Bakura slammed the book down onto the desk with a growl.

"Something wrong?" Hikari asked. He bobbed closer, hovering just over Bakura's left shoulder.

Bakura glared. "I can't find anything. These books are useless. I figured they were fakes, but I thought they'd at least point us in the right direction."

Words rested, heavy and unspoken, on Hikari's lips for a long moment. Finally, the silvery wisp sighed. "Well, they're big books. Maybe we just aren't looking hard enough. I don't know why, but… I'm sure that the _Compaendium_ has something inside. Please, don't give up just yet."

"Bah, give up. I don't know the meaning of the words. Just pisses me off," Bakura shot back. He narrowed his eyes and fixed a dirty look on the red cover. The shiny black mark on the front gleamed malevolently. Almost as an afterthought, he pulled down the collar of his t-shirt and studied the nearly identical mark on his chest.

It was funny. It had been three days since the mark had first appeared, but instead of fading any, it seemed to be getting bolder. Brighter. And it itched like a bitch.

He frowned and scratched at his chest absently.

"Come on, just keep reading," Hikari said.

Bakura grimaced at the book and then at Hikari. "Funny. Just a couple of days ago, you were telling me the books were eeevviiiillll. Now it's 'keep reading, Bakura!' every time I look away from the page."

Bakura imagined Hikari would have shot him a withering glare, had it been possible to see anything resembling a face. As it was, the vague grey tinge darkened substantially and there seemed to be a slightly sinister cast to the lashing silver tendrils.

"Well, just- you're only reading it. I don't think reading it will do... Much... I think..." Hikari muttered. "I just don't want you to keep getting distracted and spending longer looking than you need to."

"Ha! Admit it, you want to get out of here more than you are scared of these silly nonsense books," Bakura said.

Hikari froze sharply in the air, and then gave a quick shudder, conceding the point a little quicker than Bakura expected him too. "... Maybe."

Bakura sighed and returned to reading. And here he'd hoped to bait Hikari into being defensive. Failure. It just wasn't as fun without people pissed at him.

* * *

Whispers spread like wildfire in class the next day, and the rumor mill was already grinding away at a furious pace when he showed up for school. And here's the thing, Bakura wouldn't have believed the drivel for an instant, except for the fact that Ryou Yamata's desk was empty for the first time in, according to the stories, years.

Some claimed that he'd been kidnapped last night. Grabbed in a van as he walked home, or taken in the night from his bed while he slept. Still others claimed that they'd seen him walking alone in the moonlight, stumbling the way people do when drunk or sleepwalking.

Others said he'd been murdered, and that they'd seen his corpse with their own eyes, splayed out in some park or bridge or another.

Of all the rumors, he was even less inclined to believe this than the rest. Not because it was so ridiculous that a student would perish so young. It was that the other students, with their weak stomachs and naïveté, could speak so easily about seeing a stiff beyond funerals and last rites.

Right. Harder souls than them had gone pale at the sight of blood, when they knew that a quiet breath had been someone's last. Tougher men, Bakura had found crying themselves to sleep, alternately damning every god they knew. The first time was the hardest. No one knew so well as he did.

He scoffed under his breath as the murmurs dragged on long beyond the start of class. And though there were many things Bakura would have rather done than learn the basics of implicit differentiation, he found himself relieved when that damned Naraki-sensei silenced class and pointedly started the lesson.

At lunch, he felt a pointy finger jab his shoulder. After ignoring the first few pokes, he finally whirled around and glared at Yugi. "What the devil do you want?" he snapped.

"What do you make of this?" Yugi asked. His purple eyes were bright and piercing. Disconcerting.

"I think people are making a bigger deal of this than they should be," Bakura said. "The bloke's probably sick today. And, as I _might_ have said once or twice before, I like it when others mind their own business."

"Pfft, fine then." Yugi said. "You probably don't even remember Ryou Yamata, do you? I'm the only person you talk to."

"Because you don't leave me the hell alone," Bakura growled. "I know which one Yamata was. He was the only person in this class who wasn't a wishy-washy son of a bitch."

"You mean he was a bully," Yugi said.

"I mean he was an asshole. But asshole or not, at least he wasn't a prissy little pain in the neck like you," Bakura said, turning back around.

"Of course," Yugi muttered under his breath, sounding rather sour. Bakura chuckled softly to himself. The day already seemed like a win for Bakura.

An hour and a half later, Yugi tried to ask Bakura more about that damned missing student, but Yugi misjudged. He tried to have this discussion during class. Bakura couldn't wipe the smirk off his face as Naraki-sensei gave Yugi detention for the distraction. And when Yugi sputtered at the injustice, it went from one day of detention to two, pushing at a third.

Yugi fell silent. Bakura nearly burst into cruel laughter. All was right with the world.

* * *

Bakura settled back in with the _Compaendium_ again after he finished his homework, at Hikari's less than subtle urging. His old skimming process, involving sloping a few dozen pages at a time, wasn't bringing him the results he wanted, so he had to refine his process a bit.

He now took in a couple words per page, just trying to get a feel for what it was trying to explain. The hope was that he'd find something relevant enough to merit a more in-depth readthrough.

But as he worked his way through the droning hours of turning pages, his eyes began to glaze and wander and slow. He skipped less and less at a time. Eventually he found himself completely absorbed in the _Compaendium_ , the way he'd been so utterly enraptured by the introduction.

It was an essay on innate magical potential. Boring stuff, really, or so it sounded like. But it was a bit more interesting than that.

It seemed that all of nature was in a state of perpetual magical potential, the way an object perched on a ledge might have kinetic potential. Basic physics explained that removing the ledge would cause the object to begin to fall, all because of this potential energy inside of it. The kinetic potential becomes kinetic motion downward.

However, until the ledge is removed, it shows no outward signs of this. As long as the ledge supports the object, the object will continue to sit motionless, awaiting the chance to spiral down to the ground under the divine force of gravity.

Similarly, everything in existence had a latent magical potential inside of it. It was a sort of energy that flowed and moved and could be felt and manipulated by those who dealt intimately with the stuff. Because of this, there was the possibility for shadowtouched to capitalize on this innate potential.

Shadowtouched, it read, had the unique ability to see the ledge supporting the object for what it was: something removable, which could be adjusted to suit the shadowtouched's whims.

To the average human, the metaphorical ledge wasn't just immovable; it was a fact of life, not even acknowledged to exist due to the simple fact that it had always been there, seemed to play no role in the object's existence, and changed nothing that they could perceive.

To one of the shadowtouched, there was more than just a ledge. Suddenly there was a ledge and the flow of energy just begging to be manipulated. For a price, of course.

Removing the ledge to send an object falling to the ground would take resources, and so too did manipulating the fabric of reality through the influence of the shadows. The price varied, of course, but would always be paid in full, regardless of the result.

It even listed three starter spells.

Bakura burst into laughter as he reached the short list. Hikari, who had taken to watching anime on Bakura's cell phone, drifted away from the screen.

"Is everything alright?" he asked with no small amount of concern.

Bakura got himself under control quickly, but he was still smirking and wiping away tears for several lingering seconds. "It's just this book. It's ridiculous. Talking about magical spells like this, it's just-" He chuckled again. "Heh. Had me up till then, but it's just so… hmm… Reminds me of Bloody Mary. Spooky if you believe it, sure, but everyone else sees that it's bullshit. Interesting bullshit, of course, but nothing of interest or consequence."

Hikari was quiet. "... What is Bloody Mary?" he asked, and the head-like part of the wisp cocked to the side.

"You don't know?" Bakura asked. "She's just a little mirror ghost from a story kids tell to scare themselves. An urban legend. You go in the bathroom with a candle or flashlight, usually, but any dark room with a mirror works, and you say 'Bloody Mary' three times. Legend has it, she'll appear in the mirror, dripping with blood, and will do one of several things to you. Either she'll claw your eyes out, curse you, steal your soul, or outright kill you. Childish. Been around for maybe… eh… forty years."

"Childish?!" Hikari cried. "What kind of childish game ends with your soul stolen or your eyes clawed out? That sounds like a mischievous demon, not a mirror ghost!"

Bakura rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me you're scared of an urban legend. And anyway, we aren't talking about Bloody Mary, we're talking about stupid spells." He stared at the book for a long moment before glancing back at Hikari. "I'm gonna try one."

"I thought you said they were stupid."

Bakura glared. "I did. But I still want to do it. That, or I'm showing you Bloody Mary just to see if ghosts like you can piss yourselves from fear."

Hikari twisted 180 degrees. Pouting, probably. "You're so mean," he said in a sulky tone, and Bakura stifled a small smirk. Definitely pouting.

"Right. So. Stupid spell," Bakura said. He turned out the light and sat back down at the desk, trying to read in the faint glow cast from Hikari's backside.

Supposedly, the spell would 'summon light'. Never mind that it broke physics to just summon light. He twisted his fingers into the recommended gesture, stumbling as he tried to pronounce the strange, foreign words. As an afterthought, he jabbed his fingers into a little twist that was advised by the book. He tried to imagine light filling the room.

Unsurprisingly, nothing happened.

He tried again, the wording coming a little easier this time, but still nothing happened. He started to laugh. "It's so stupid!"

"Stop laughing. Do it again."

Hikari had turned around some time during all of this, but he wasn't bobbing in the air. He was frozen, his voice blunt and serious. Bakura blinked. Something about Hikari seemed wrong. His light had dimmed. The color had paled. Something about him seemed more severe.

Bakura made a face. "What's gotten into you?"

Hikari jerked, and the color returned with a sudden flush. "I'm sorry, what was that?" he asked, moving slowly left and right once more. A portion of the wisp suddenly tilted to the left, like a cocked head. "I didn't quite hear."

Bakura narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brows, but chose to say nothing. Whatever had come over Hikari seemed to be gone now. Either way, it wasn't like this was doing anything.

He jabbed his fingers in the gesture one more time and said the words once more, willing light into existence.

A flash split the dark. Blindingly bright and white as fresh snow, it swelled to fill the room and then fell back, settling into an orb hovering at eye level where his fingers pointed.

Bakura's jaw fell open.

"Holy shit," he breathed. He moved his hands slightly to the left, and then back to the right, and the orb followed the gesture exactly. Even when he moved his hands in more complicated movements, it mimicked the gestures. "Holy shit!" He fell backward out of his chair.

"I told you!" Hikari cried, swirling around the orb.

"Holy shit!" Bakura said louder. He pushed himself to his feet, moving the orb around the room and watching the play of reflections and shadows skate over the room. He flicked his fingers towards the corner, and the orb stuck against the wall. "This isn't real."

"I told you!" Hikari repeated. He swirled back over to Bakura, glowing as bright as the orb did. "It's real and it's magic, and I told you to take it seriously!"

Bakura waved his hand in front of it, and it dimmed and flickered out of existence. He summoned another, and then two and three, and sent them spinning through the room in curious swirls and loop-de-loops before banishing all but one.

A sudden wave of exhaustion washed over him, but he pushed it out of his mind.

"This changes everything," Bakura whispered, staring in awe at the last lit orb. He extinguished it, too, and turned to look at Hikari.

Maybe the books weren't actually horseshit. Hikari alone had been enough to cast a bit of reasonable doubt, but now…

His eyes flickered over to the book resting on the desk, still open to the page on innate magical potential.

Where had he read the words shadowtouched before?

* * *

The next day of class brought with it more rumors and more unconfirmed, unsolicited stories. All of them were, of course, regarding Ryou Yamata, who had supposedly been kidnapped, killed, or worse over 24 hours ago.

Curiously enough, all of today's rumors seemed to agree on many facts, which Bakura would later discover were almost entirely true thanks to a late night news broadcast that aired that evening.

The boy had been found late last evening by a businesswoman on her way home after a long day of work. As she crossed a bridge, a pair of muddy shoes sticking out of a bush caught the corner of her eye. Attached to those muddy shoes were a pair of mud-stained trousers from the uniform of a local private school.

Curious, the woman had picked her way through brush to get a closer look, and had found the still body of the raven-haired, corpse-pale Ryou Yamata. An emergency services call and a rush to the hospital later, and the verdict was in.

Ryou Yamata was alive, uninjured, and deep in an unexplained coma from which he would not awaken.

This was not the strangest thing to the students, however. No, the strangest part was that this wasn't the first time that this had happened.

Six other people had been discovered around Domino in the last two years or so, all of them still deep in a coma from which none of them had awakened from.

Bakura braced himself for another game of twenty questions from that damned Motou, but to his surprise, Yugi was not in class the first half of the day, and when he showed up in time for the second half, he was deathly pale and wore a look of vague horror.

He did not approach or even acknowledge Bakura, though he did look remarkably shocked to see Bakura sitting in the same seat he'd sat in all of term. But beyond that, Yugi didn't really acknowledge or speak to anyone all day, not even as he departed to carry out his detention with some teacher on the other side of the school.

Whoever died and threw that kid under a freaking train, Bakura couldn't care less. At least Motou had stopped bothering him at last.

Meanwhile at home, his vigor in the _Compaendium_ was renewed. The lure of possible magic was just too attractive to ignore. Well, he called it magic.

The book prefered to call it the manipulation of shadow threads, which dictated the control of that magical potential stuff that had been explained in the overlong, dissertation-level essay. Which was all well and good, but as far as Bakura was concerned, the name didn't matter half as much as the result.

And the results were highly compelling so far. The three spells in the essay had all proved to be as simple to master as the book had posited they would be, and Bakura was determined to find more. He remembered long lists of spells and rituals and effects detailed in earlier passages of the book, and it only took an hour or two to find the pages again.

Initially, he'd discounted all of them as some sort of occult fantasy of the kind you could find in any generic web search for magic spells. The variety of approaches and the simplicity of some of them seemed to give them a highly discreditable factor.

But the light spell had actually _worked_. The spell to bring the rain had taken three hours to show results, but the unseasonably strong thunderstorm had been more than a little convincing. And maybe it was a touch of vanity, but he liked to think that his eyes really had flickered between their usual reddish color and equally-startling hues of lilac, acid green, and the blue of a depthless ocean.

Either he was experiencing hallucinations that were extremely vivid and realistic and suffered from a bad case of happenstance and poor lighting, or there was something to this shadowtouched thing.

He didn't give it much thought. Instead, he diverted his attentions to the massive list of spells and started picking through the ones that were supposedly the simplest. He planned on trying them out as soon as he could. For... Scientific reasons.

To his left, Hikari let out a deep sigh. Bakura was tempted to ignore it the way he'd ignored all of the dozen other pointed sighs which Hikari had been prone to over the last few hours. If he asked, he'd have to stop his work, and then he'd be making no progress on this matter. Then again, if he continued to ignore Hikari, the sighs would continue, and god were they distracting.

He glanced up for a moment. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," Hikari said, seemingly surprised to even be noticed. "Just… do you see anything about salt? Or maybe other things that can get me out of here?"

"In a minute, I'm almost finished," Bakura said.

There was another deep sigh from Hikari, but Bakura's attentions were already reclaimed by the book. There were a few basic level bindings and simple enchantments that seemed like they'd be pretty easy to get the hang of, and he only included on his list the ones that he had the ingredients to pull off already laying around his house.

"You really shouldn't be doing this," Hikari worried.

Bakura jolted from the book and glanced up. Another hour had passed since he'd last looked away. Where had the time gone?

"You're dabbling with things that you shouldn't be messing with. It's _evil_ stuff. Summoning one ball of light to know it's real is one thing, but all of this will corrupt your heart and soul."

Bakura sneered. "I'm already corrupted inside and out, don't you realize?"

Hikari twisted slightly in what Bakura was starting to realize was a pout, but then again, Hikari probably thought Bakura was kidding. He wasn't.

If Bakura was right, it was that exact corruption that allowed him to do any of this in the first place. Because the first thing he'd done when he got home (even before Hikari looked up from his marathon session of anime) was go back to the introduction where he'd first seen mention of the shadowtouched.

He had a pretty good idea of what it meant to be one, now. And if Hikari was in the dark about it for now, so be it. He'd find out eventually.

* * *

Morning dawned bright and early, and Bakura was dead tired. He could barely hold his eyes open, though the red color was alert and bright in the mirror. His bones felt like they weighed a ton or more.

He was starting to regret staying up all night playing with magic. Schooling was not conducive to nocturnal behavior, no matter how much Bakura liked the night. Only a few more months, he repeated to himself as he dressed. A few more months, and he'd be free to do as he pleased without anyone breathing down his neck. Play the game for a little longer.

Hikari grumbled a bit, mostly soft 'I told you so's' that he didn't think Bakura could hear. Little pain in the neck was getting as bad as Yugi sometimes. But at least it kept things interesting at home.

The usual yell from Hikari, "Don't forget to tell me everything when you get home!" was the last thing he heard as he left.

Unsurprisingly, Yugi was back at it that day at school. Whatever had happened the previous day, he'd recovered in full. The finger jabbed his shoulder earlier than usual today, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from saying anything truly horrible.

"You look tired today, Kurokawa-kun. Everything alright?" Yugi whispered.

"Fine."

"Are you sure? You don't look fine. Have you been up to anything lately?"

Bakura glared back. "Why the hell do you want to know? Mind your own goddamned business."

Yugi shrugged and sat back in his chair, but he was still staring at Bakura with those damned red eyes. Bakura blinked. Wait. Hadn't Yugi's eyes always been some obnoxious shade of purple? Bakura didn't even care about the color of people's eyes 99 times out of a hundred, but he knew that he wasn't just imagining the change.

He glared, puzzling over the change. Yugi stared unblinkingly back, his smile dissolving somewhat. Only, rather than looking him in the eye like a man, Yugi was looking down, eyes somewhere over Bakura's chest. Right over his heart, to be specific. Right at the mark hidden under his shirt.

"What are you staring at?" Bakura groused.

Yugi startled. "Oh? Hmmm... Nothing. Sorry to bother you, Kurokawa-kun."

"You aren't sorry," Bakura muttered, settling back into his seat for the remainder of the lesson. He narrowed his eyes at the board. Yugi was fishing for something. What it was, Bakura wasn't sure. But it was getting old very quickly. He'd have to do something about this problem if it didn't stop soon.


	5. Chapter 5

It had taken a while, but he finally found it. He had stumbled upon a veritable goldmine of information entirely by accident. Quite literally, he had stumbled over the Compaendium after setting it on the floor, and he found the book kicked open to a section about beasties, monsters, and spooks.

He took a brief break from spell-prep to read, and he soon found himself intrigued by all sorts of monsters and creatures that couldn't possibly be real and yet seemed to exist. At least, it was implied that they exist. Whether or not any of these demons, liches, and werewolves were real or not remained to be seen.

But that wasn't the victory won. No, as he worked his way through the lovingly (and often horrifyingly gruesome) illustrated pages, he found a rough ink sketch of something vague, indistinct. Something with the look of a humanoid doll, but like a sketch with too many lines drawn, until the entire image was obscured.

There were a few minor differences, but it was undeniable: he had found Hikari in the book at long last.

As Hikari spun thrilled circles around Bakura's head, he began to read aloud the section on manifest souls.

Souls were not things that could be seen, usually. They inhabited bodies and provided them with the life force necessary to be alive. A soul was the voice inside a person's head. It was what gave a body thought and feelings. Needless to say, it was very important. And because of its importance, bad things could occur should a soul be ripped from its shell.

Few things are powerful enough to be capable of ripping a soul out of a body: a brutal and violent death would be sufficient, or it could be done while the body still lives by a small assortment of beings and/or rituals. Either way, the end result would be the separation of body and soul, and the manifestation of that soul into a slightly more corporeal state.

These lost souls roam the surface of the earth, trapped in this plane, unable to find reprieve. The gates of heaven barred, the road to hell closed off, and even purgatory sealed away from them. They are forced to dwell in our plane of existence until such time as they are eaten by rogue demons, banished, or coerced into a ritual to place them inside of another (already empty, and this was important) shell. They could be bound to objects to empower them, used to fuel spells, and could even be trapped through various means.

It went on to say that some creatures, demons in particular, would eat the soul and leave the body alive but nonfunctioning. Others, such as shadowtouched, swappers, and necromancers, might remove the soul so that it could be used for some purpose or another, and it went on and on, not going particularly in-depth into any one facet.

"But yes!" Bakura said, "the important part is that the book says that souls can be bound and trapped. And I just had an idea. See, a necromancer is someone who plays around with the dead, and it says that souls are technically considered 'dead' even though they can be revived, so here's my thought. If all of this is true, and I like our odds lately after the magic spell debacle, then the Necronomicon might have a few nuggets of truth inside of it as well. And since it's the Necronomicon, it's probably going to have information that's relevant to what we need."

"Well..." Hikari mumbled.

"Come on, you should be excited. We're this close to figuring it out!" Bakura said, holding his fingers an inch apart. He tossed the Compaendium aside and reached for the lock picks.

Hikari shuffled slowly through the air. "I- I know, and I appreciate it, I really do, but..."

Hikari stopped shuffling and froze a bit higher than eye level, tendrils drooping sadly towards the ground.

"It's just, it's such a thin line we're walking right now, and I don't know how much longer we can go without something going terribly wrong. You're already sliding down a slippery slope with all of these spells you've been playing with lately. How big of a jump would it be to go from using the Necronomicon to help me to using it for evil?"

Bakura snorted derisively, and his fingers twisted mindlessly over the metal picks. "Ye of little faith," he scoffed. "I have tons of self control. I just want to figure this out, and the sooner the better." He looked down at the lock picks and then at the closed Compaendium, bookmarked with the spell sheet. He grinned.

The lock picks were left on the desk as Bakura scrabbled up into the attic, choosing instead to bring the spell sheet and a dry erase marker he'd swiped from school that morning. There was an unlocking charm he was dying to try out.

He sketched the advised sigil onto the front corner of the padlock, struggling with the blunted tip of the marker, and was eventually satisfied with the result. He visualized the lock springing open, snapped his fingers, and to his immense surprise, it opened, right away and without a second's delay.

Awesome.

He dragged the unwieldy Necronomicon from the chest and locked it back up again, already riffling through the pages as he returned to his room. Hikari hovered worriedly over his shoulder.

"It should go faster now," Bakura started. "I've got a basic idea of what I'm dealing with now, so I'm not just taking shots into the dark." He grinned. "You'll be out of here and playing lookout for me before you know it."

"I'm not helping you do anything illegal," Hikari warned. "I won't do it!"

"Illegal is just a point of view," Bakura shot back, waving his hand dismissively through the air.

The words swam faintly before his eyes as he flipped through. The first few chapters weren't what he needed. He kept flipping.

A twinge built in the back of his head. The next few chapters weren't right either. The pain in his head worsened slightly.

He groaned and grabbed his temples as he kept working through the massive book, reading titles of chapters to find something in the vein of dealing with souls. Hikari looked worried.

"Are you alright?" he asked, hovering slightly closer.

Bakura didn't look up, but his fingers buried themselves a little deeper into his temples. "Fine. I'm getting closer, I think..." He was wincing.

Hikari hovered in front of the book, causing Bakura to jump in surprise, wincing at the light. "If you need to stop-"

"I'm almost there," Bakura said. His eyes felt trapped by the book, dizzied by it, but it made the dark feeling in his chest swell wonderfully. It was like a drug high. He found the chapter. Now he just needed the passage.

"Bakura!" Hikari yelped. Bakura was reading through him, not even paying attention to Hikari's cries. The wisp drifted through the book, but Bakura just kept moving it away. He swayed unsteadily.

Finally, he found it. Four hours had slipped by somehow, and he blinked blankly at the wall as he puzzled over how it could have gotten so late so fast. It had felt like ten minutes.

He groaned faintly and rubbed at his eyes. His head felt like it was going to explode. He swayed again, and he pushed the books under his bed with his foot, hiding them behind a jacket that he kicked under after them.

He stood, wavering on his feet. "I need-" he mumbled. His tongue felt like it had swollen several times larger than it should have been, and it made it hard to talk. The headache made it just as hard to think. "... Water."

He reached for the door handle. Then he collapsed to the floor in a dead faint.

He came to much later, in the witching hours of morning. He gasped in pain. His chest felt like it was on fire.

"Hot, too hot!" he yelled, ripping at his shirt. He yanked it over his head, clawing at his bare chest. The mark on his skin was glowing faintly. It felt like the source of the heat. He gagged on cool oxygen. The carpet was too rough against his skin, but he squirmed over it like a worm, wriggling desperately towards the nearby bathroom.

He gasped as he pulled open the door. He fumbled once, twice, three times with the faucet. Too long. The water flowed like beautiful ice over his fingers. He splashed himself like a dying man.

Then, as quickly as it had come over him, it cooled.

"It was too much," Hikari whispered. "I should have known."

Bakura narrowed his eyes. His fingers clenched over the mark. "What do you mean?"

"I had forgotten. But I shouldn't have. The Necronomicon is not like other books. Its knowledge is not meant for mortal eyes. It is a book of death magic whose songs are sung by demons and plague beasts and worse. It is a collection of their knowledge composed into mortal language. And reading it... It changes people."

"Clearly," Bakura grumbled, rubbing at his head. Hikari's light was luminescent and harsh. Phantom pains still swirled behind his eyes, but compared to what it had been once, the pain was tolerable.

Hikari shook quickly back and forth. "No, you don't get it. I- just... Look in the mirror."

Bakura grumbled quietly to himself, but he still pushed himself unsteadily to his feet and looked toward the mirror. "Shit."

His eyes were glowing in the dark, the pupils slitted. He'd always fancied his eyes as red, but that was vanity; the color was always a reddish sort of brown, like long dried blood. But now the crimson was bright as the fresh stuff, red as grave roses and poison apples.

He grinned. "I look terrifying."

"Why are you smiling?" Hikari asked. "You do look terrifying! That's not a good thing! Everyone will see!"

Bakura shook his head and waved his fingers indistinctly over his eyes. The bright red melted away and became the old muted red brown color, and the pupils dimmed and rounded once again.

"You forget, Hikari. I can do this now, thanks to the Compaendium." His smile tightened, his mind already tracking back to the Necronomicon hidden away under his bed. "I wonder what else that book can do..."

* * *

Hikari was still worried when the sun came up. That wasn't surprising, and it was easy to ignore. What was worse than Hikari's concern were the looks from his relatives as he went down to breakfast.

His uncle tended to leave for work as Bakura was coming downstairs, so they rarely got more than a passing glance at each other. But when his uncle saw him, he stopped in the doorway. "Bakura? What happened?"

His aunt left the kitchen and she let out a little whimper when she saw him. "Oh, Bakura, are you feeling okay? You look sick! You're so pale. Come here, let me see if you have a fever-" Her hands fluttered near his face.

"I'm fine," he said, backing away. She looked put out, but didn't push the matter. Typical.

He'd been mostly invisible for the last few weeks. His aunt liked to play concerned mother, especially since she'd never had kids of her own. But when it came right down to it, she didn't care that much. It was an appearances thing. She liked looking like the perfect doting mother (aunt) when in reality she only cared so long as Bakura didn't wander in the night where people could see him.

She probably loved it when he stayed put in his room all hours of the night, reading those books. She could tell the neighbors about how dedicated and hardworking her 'precious nephew' was, and it kept her off of Bakura's back.

It was mutually beneficial, and Bakura knew better than to mess with a good thing. Stirring up the status quo would only make things worse. And as nice as it would have been to put on an act and skip school to spend more time reading, the thought of looking at those books for one more minute made him physically nauseous, especially so soon after waking up on the floor from the last time. A break would be good.

After it all had been said and done, he ended up running just late enough to miss his train, and he was late to class. He considered making a run for it to minimize how late he'd be, but bugger that. He didn't care enough to bother. He slowed and set himself a leisurely pace to class, wandering in 20 or 30 minutes late. He was already going to get detention anyway.

But, to his surprise, when he came into the classroom, Naraki-sensei looked him up and down and sent him to his desk with little more than a 'don't do it again'. Bakura harrumphed. He must have looked worse than he thought.

Yugi recoiled visibly as Bakura approached his desk, but then relaxed so quickly that Bakura wondered if he imagined it.

"Wow, Kurokawa-kun. If I showed up this late, I'd be in detention for a month. How'd you luck out?" Yugi asked, leaning a bit closer to Bakura's ear to keep the sound down. Bakura slowly leaned forward as well to maintain distance.

"Motou, no talking in my class. You've got another night of detention with Aizawa-sensei."

"Really, Naraki-sensei?" Yugi asked, batting his eyes as though that might somehow manage to sway their teacher.

"Do you want another night?" Naraki asked, crossing his arms at the front of the classroom. Bakura smirked. Naraki-sensei's warning tone was a lot scarier than any of other teachers. Most students looked ready to piss themselves when he used it.

Yugi just sighed. "No, sir."

Yugi huffed and sat back in his seat, waiting until their teacher had resumed the lesson to lean forward once again. Bakura was getting pretty sick of this shit.

"By the way, anything new happening lately?"

"No," Bakura replied.

Yugi leaned even closer. "Sure?"

"Of course."

"The teacher seems to like you. Why is that?"

"Probably because I'm not a suck up like you, and I'm more than willing to tell people when they can just piss off. Like now. Piss off. Seriously," Bakura muttered under his breath. He glared backward for a brief second to get the point across.

It wasn't his imagination. Yugi's eyes were purple today, just as they'd been before their brief stint of red. And Yugi was still staring suspiciously close to where Bakura's mark was.

He turned back around quickly, scratching it through the uniform jacket. It'd been hurting a bit all day for some strange reason, but now that he could feel Yugi's eyes on it, it was making his skin crawl in addition to the vague twinge.

He scowled down at his history notes. It was his own eyes. They had to be the cause. He'd been keeping up the image of normalcy for hours, and though he knew he could hold it up for the rest of the day, he could definitely feel the faint drain of it sapping away at him. He let out a brief sigh.

Maybe the eyes weren't all they were cracked up to be. His vision was a bit sharper, and he'd noticed that he could see in the dark a little better, but now he had to actually use this... shadow stuff... near constantly just to keep from attracting attention.

Could it be undone? Did he even want it undone? No, the eyes could stay. Hell, he could probably ditch the shadows recoloring them and pass the new look off as colored contacts. He doubted anyone would be surprised if he of all people did that. Was that the smartest decision? He'd have to think on it.

But for now... Best to maintain the illusion.

Back at home, he tried the Necronomicon once again. He had to steel his resolve, silence the tiny, nagging feeling deep in his gut that told him not to, and ignore Hikari's reminders of what had happened last time, but he still did it. It was a book. A goddamned book. It wasn't going to get the better of him, and there was no way in hell he was going to be frightened of it.

He opened the book to the bookmarked passage, but paused before he actually started. No. He wasn't scared. Not at all. Not one... little... bit... His lips tightened.

"Nervous?" Hikari asked.

Bakura scowled. "Never," he shot back, and he started to read.

He managed to make it all the way through the section before he felt as though he'd collapse. His breath was labored, his head ached worse than even yesterday, the smell of sulfur refused to leave his nostrils, and yet, for some reason, he didn't feel quite so horrible this time. It was a feeling not entirely unlike the sensation one gets from a roller coaster: traces of fear and apprehension, but also an overwhelming feeling of flight, of freedom, of being inches away from being flung into the sky and loving every second of it.

He stumbled into the bathroom and hurled.

"It's too much," Hikari said above his head. "We should lock that book back up, stop reading it, it's ev-"

"If you say evil one more time, I'm going to throw you out the window," Bakura panted. He looked up from the porcelain throne he'd been worshipping and glared.

Hikari whimpered. "Well..." Empty threat or not, it got the point across. Hikari fell reticent and backed up to the wall.

Bakura braced himself against the tile floor and wobbled onto his feet, using the toilet as a crutch to get him up. His head swam, and his vision washed over with black for several seconds. He groaned. "God I'm hungry."

He made it downstairs, realizing only seconds too late the entirely real possibility of seeing his aunt in there. But fortune smiled down at him. The kitchen was empty. He started to eat whatever he could get his hands on, stuffing his mouth the way a man might if he thought he'd never see food again.

Finally he got a hold on himself.

"Right," he mumbled through the mouthful of food. He looked up at Hikari, who drew closer. "Let's talk about the good stuff."

"Are you okay-"

"Look," Bakura snapped. "Assume I'm always fine. I'll tell you if I'm not."

"No you won't," Hikari muttered. Bakura ignored it.

He smiled, but it was cold and slightly detached. "Now, don't you want to know what I found?"

Hikari drifted closer still. Bakura bit off another mouthful and spoke while he chewed.

"Right. So. The book had a lot to say on the matter. Most of it wasn't related to what you need to leave the house, but I did find a section about traps for souls. It had a lot to say about the power of marks and sigils, which I'm starting to think are some sort of combination of level one magic and what you use when everything else is impossible or overly difficult."

Hikari nodded. "Yes, that sounds right to me."

"Anyway, the deal is this: certain marks can empower or contain charms for longer periods of time, and also alter the effect of whatever you're trying to accomplish."

"Like the padlock," Hikari said with a nod. "It had one on the back already, protecting it, but the mark you made allows you to open it with shadow threads."

Bakura grinned. "Hadn't even thought about that." He'd just been following the Compaendium's instructions when he'd done that. Good to know there was some sort of rhyme or reason to what was required of him. And with that in mind, he would have to memorize how to replicate the sigil for future reference...

"So, did it have a trapping charm empowered by marks?" Hikari asked. He tilted slightly to the side.

"Yes. I'll bring some supplies home tomorrow. The marks looked a little tricky, but I think I can get them right with a little work. My biggest concern is being able to look at the book long enough to copy them. I'm not sure if it's easier or harder to use the book today, but..."

"If it's too difficult for you-"

"Oh well now you're just making it a challenge, aren't you?" Bakura grinned.

* * *

He implied multiple times that he would be buying these supplies. But that would require money, and he'd replaced his usual nighttime thieving jaunts with burying his nose in a magical book that sucked the life out of him. Trade offs.

So he didn't exactly have the money to purchase them from the store. Good thing Bakura didn't need to do that. Bakura watched everything. Where people went, when, why. He watched people's patterns, and he was figuring the school out quickly enough.

The art room was left unlocked all day, but there were students in the room any time except from 1 to 2. The only person inside then would be the art teacher. She would leave the room for bathroom runs sometime during that time. He had a five minute window. The only problem was that it was during a class of his own...

He had the morning to come up with a plausible excuse. Something that would get him out of the classroom for an indeterminate amount of time. Asking to use the bathroom himself wouldn't work, if he needed to wait outside the room for up to an hour. He could ask to go to the nurse... But then he'd probably have to go there for real. The school was a stickler about having students exactly where they should be, no wandering the halls. So what he really needed wasn't an excuse to leave the room, but one to wander around the school.

What would work for that, he wondered?

As one o'clock drew closer, he was not getting worried. True, this was his only guaranteed chance, and if he couldn't do it now, he'd have to hope that he could pick the lock before someone walked past and saw him. And if he didn't get the supplies, then all of this effort was basically a lost cause. But this was so minor it was a non issue.

He drummed his pencil against his thigh. There had to be some sort of excuse that could get him out. Some way of convincing Naraki to let him out of the classroom for an indeterminate period of time.

Magic and shadows and shit got him into this mess. Maybe it could get him out. He closed his eyes. There was a way to make yourself seem more convincing. A way of subtly influencing a listener to sway them to your desires. If he could just remember what it was, it wouldn't matter how good the excuse was. He would be let out.

It had something to do with a name... What was Naraki-sensei's full name? Bakura traced the letters in English onto the corner of the page. That was the start of it. He'd only glossed over the spell once so he wasn't for sure. There was something else.

He sketched a light circle around the words to try and jog his memory. Something inscribed inside. Simple, uncomplicated. A star, but with an odd number of points. The pencil tapped more.

Not five. Not six. Hopefully not four, he wasn't sure if he could draw that one. He marked the top of the circle. Seven sounded right... He added six more dots equidistant from each other and connected the dots to make a star over the top of the name. His hand curled around the paper to hide it from sight.

Something else, wasn't there? He closed his eyes and imagined it working, trying to quash the feeling that this was all stupid. He knew it would work, but the process for beginners was... Ugh. Naraki twitched slightly in his desk and stared out at the class. Excellent. Bakura folded the corner over and kept his eyes trained on his notes as he started to doodle a long curving blade.

Finally, the time had arrived. He braced himself, stood, and approached Naraki, trying to fake his best 'concern' face. The lie would be the easy part. Making it convincing, though, would rely more on subtle body language than the words.

The lie itself was a pretty simple one. What was the one kind of object important enough to merit needing immediate attention? Medication. Bakura chose an epipen, if only because his other idea, a diabetes meter, would draw attention to the fact that he'd never needed one before. But allergy meds? Perfect.

Naraki gave him a long look, trying to decide if he should allow Bakura to search the school or not, and Bakura gave him the most innocent look he could muster, all the while willing that silly little paper charm to just freaking work.

Naraki sighed after a moment that stretched seemingly on for hours. "Fine, you may, but be fast," he said, shooing Bakura towards the door with a slight gesture. A few students looked on in awe.

Bakura only grinned and swept easily out the door. He was free. Actually obtaining the supplies was simple, since it was only ten or twenty minutes until the art teacher left. Bakura stashed the supplies in his locker and walked back to class with his smile victorious. It wasn't even a problem. Magic made this too easy.

* * *

"School project."

"Oh," his aunt said, smiling her empty smile at the supplies he had in hand. "Such a good kid. Keep up the good work, Bakura."

Bakura nodded. "Yeah... Sure." He shuffled upstairs quickly. Questions were tiresome. He was not in the mood for more than that.

Hikari was positively glowing when Bakura entered the room, bouncing faintly. "Yes! You bought the supplies!" he said, drifting left and right without a care in the world.

Bakura scoffed. "Like I'd forget them." He grinned. "Interesting. I guess you're more excited about this than how my day went?" he asked, waving the large posterboard through the air.

Hikari slowed a bit. "Well, I mean-" he sputtered. Bakura laughed.

"Ha, no I get it. But my day was boring, so I really don't have anything interesting to tell you. So we can just get started."

Hikari sagged a bit in the air. "Ok."

Bakura darted up to the attic and retrieved the Necronomicon. Best to keep it safe and away from prying eyes, he figured, though he doubted anyone would go through his room. Better safe than sorry.

With the scrap paper, he practiced a few parts of the sigils for the better part of two hours, working them again and again until they didn't just look right, they felt right too.

Each one done fully and correctly felt different from the others, as though imbued with the shadowy dark tendrils that had attacked him that first night so long ago. He could feel the drain of them sapping at him as he finished each one correctly. And, as the book advised, he drew a slash through each finished one to destroy it and sever the flow.

Finally, he'd copied all of the marks out of the book to a workable degree, where he could put the Necronomicon back where it had been and still finish his work. It was late by this time, and a glance at the mirror revealed a drawn look to his face and dark shadows under his eyes.

He'd let the shadowy disguise over his eyes slip away the second he walked into his room, and they looked hungry and evil in the gloomy half light of the room. Very demonlike. He approved very much.

He cracked his fingers noisily and Hikari cringed at the sound. "Alright," Bakura finally announced. "Let's try this."

Hikari flitted back and forth, standing between Bakura and the door. "Are- are you sure you don't want to wait until tomorrow? You look a little… rough. Maybe you should wait until you're well rested. You're exhausted and you only had one charm up at a time. There are six."

"I'll be fine. I want to see if this works," Bakura said.

Hikari sighed.

But Hikari just didn't understand. Bakura needed to do this. He wasn't some pathetic little magician doing parlor tricks. He was Bakura, he was shadowtouched, and he could pull off something amazing with a little practice. This was just the start. If he couldn't do this much, how could he expect to become something greater and more powerful?

"Right, so," Bakura announced, laying the poster board flat on the ground. He grinned. "Let's get started."

He sketched the circle first, then the six circles around it. Inside of each of the circles, he put down the starts of each symbol, holding off the final marks of each for when all had been drawn.

The first was a minor annoyance. The second a stronger tug. Three and four sapped at him. Five was becoming laborious. He was panting visibly as he sketched the last few marks of the sixth. Lifting his marker, his body convulsed briefly.

Hikari cried out, and Bakura shook faintly as he rose back onto his knees. He coughed, and when he pulled his fingers from his lips, they were streaked faintly with red.

"Bakura-"

"Get in the circle," Bakura said, lifting the salt. He started to pour it along the inner circle line and Hikari reluctantly slunk inside the boundary before it closed off. Bakura rose to his feet, the action laborious and slow.

Had the posterboard always been this heavy? He couldn't recall. His hands were trembling as he eased his way down darkened stairs. Hikari played the role of flashlight well enough to see by, so he didn't need to turn on any lights.

The front door was silent as he nudged it open with his foot.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Hikari asked. His voice was trembling. "It's going to be even harder on you when you cross the line."

"Hard? Ha!" Bakura said. He tried to make his voice sound strong, but it quivered faintly in spite of it. The strain was audible. He approached the line and paused. Hikari held his breath.

They stepped across.

Bakura gasped. It was as though the floor was swept out from underneath him, the breath sucked from his lungs. He wavered on his feet, but then straightened out quickly enough. After the initial rush, it settled into something that, while not easy, was at the very least manageable.

"It- it works," Hikari breathed. "It works!" He whirled around to face Bakura, glowing brighter than before, before suddenly dimming. "Oh, Bakura…"

Bakura pressed his lips tightly together and stepped backwards until he could sit on the porch. The strain receded sharply after a certain point, but he still felt the drain of it even seated well behind the line. He let Hikari out of the salt line.

Then he destroyed the board.

Hikari watched as he angrily attempted to shred the marks into tiny pieces with his hands, and, failing to do that particularly effectively, dragged his knife from his pocket and flicked it open, hacking the symbols apart. Each one peeled back the layers of effort one by one until all were gone.

He was still panting when everything was said and done, but finally his breath was starting to level off slightly.

"That was… a bit rough," Bakura said. He wavered unsteadily.

"A bit?" Hikari said. "You look like you're about to collapse. Please, just get inside before you drop unconscious on your porch."

Bakura scoffed and staggered back into the house. His footsteps sounded deafening compared to what they usually sounded like. He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard his footfalls on wood flooring, let alone on carpet as he could now.

He coughed again, and there was more blood on his fingertips. His skin was stark white, almost bloodless. He was sickly-looking in the mirror. The mark on his chest hurt like hell. He clawed at the collar of his shirt, dragging it low enough to see the hint of red.

It was almost luminescent in the pale light. The mark was stark against his skin. In fact, it seemed to be almost shifting just underneath the skin, cloudy hints of darkness moving languidly with his pulse.

He dropped heavily into the bed.

"Refining the charms will make it more effective and less draining on you," Hikari mentioned in a small voice.

Bakura rolled over to look at the wisp hovering a few feet above the ground. "Really? How d'you know that?"

"Not sure," Hikari said, seemingly shrugging. "I just do. It sounds right, anyway."

"Good," Bakura groaned, clutching at his head. It hurt worse than ever before, and the world started to spin before his eyes. "Because that freaking sucked."

Hikari moved up to eye level, dimming to a soft, barely-lit glow. "I'm sorry, Bakura."

Bakura harrumphed and lost consciousness.

* * *

 **I'm considering adding tendershipping and puzzleshipping, with the possibility of Bakushipping later on. Thoughts? Objections? Reaffirmations? Feel free to leave a review, and thanks for reading.**


	6. Chapter 6

The alarm on his phone blared in his ear. He threw his phone at the distant wall to shut it up, but it continued to play, and Bakura had to roll out of bed, onto the floor, and stumble over to the other side of the room to shut it off.

His eyes were bloodshot. Hikari approached hesitantly, rippling with his silvery tendrils. "... Bakura? How are you feeling?"

He'd had another of the old nightmares last night, and it hadn't ended until his phone had dragged him from sleep's heavy clutches. He rubbed at his temples and groaned under his breath. "Like horse shit," Bakura rasped. His voice was rough and cracking. "Look it, too."

"And smell it," Hikari added.

Bakura glared. "Not helping." It was far too early to be dealing with something like this from a wisp.

"No, wait," Hikari said slowly, drawing a bit closer. His color pulsed from dark to light to dark to light. "No, not just smell, you reek."

"How can you even sm-"

"No, not physically. You reek of black magic. It's all over you. It's... Ugh." Hikari cringed and curled inward, and he floated backward. He sounded like he was going to be sick. "It wasn't this bad yesterday."

Bakura frowned. "What do you mean, wasn't this bad? I smelled like magic before?"

Hikari nodded, still curled inward. He held a pair of tendrils an inch apart from one another. "Little bit."

Bakura made a noise of disgust. "Lovely." Of course it wasn't enough for the book to turn his eyes a different shade of red. It had to make him smell too, and it had a vaguely familiar scent. Something that made him slightly nauseous in spite of himself.

He stomped off to take a shower. Out of courtesy, Hikari lingered in the room.

Bakura was toweling off his hair when he came back in, red mark gleaming on gaunt, white skin. "Better?" he asked. He sniffed his arm. It smelled like soap and something burning.

Hikari curled inward once more. "No, it's still there." He drifted slowly down. "Hmmm. What herbs does your aunt have in the house?"

Bakura shrugged. "Probably not many."

Hikari ambled aimlessly, as if pacing. "Huh... There might be candles in the attic... Those would work, I think, if I remember right."

Bakura stuck his head up there and found a sack full of votives near the chest. He shook the sack, and the glass rattled noisily. "What are they for?"

Hikari cringed as Bakura stepped slightly closer, and he mimed gagging. Bakura rolled his eyes. Goddamned drama queen.

He brought them down. Hikari struggled to talk Bakura through some sort of ceremony involving lighting them and washing his hands off several times with water from the bathroom faucet. The ritual chants were strange, and Hikari had to lead him through it a few times to get the wording correct. He finished by blowing the candles out one at a time.

"So. That accomplished...?" Bakura asked, sniffing his arms again. Now he smelled like soap and tallow, but the burning smell was gone.

Hikari bounced. "A lot, actually! Much better! Yes, I remember! That's a way to cleanse you of shadows to go undetected!"

"Who would be looking for the shadows?" Bakura asked. "Besides you and me?"

Hikari shivered. "I- I can't remember right now. But... There's a reason practitioners stayed quiet most of the time. I'll try and remember what it was."

Bakura snorted. "Right. Well. At least I don't smell like tar and campfire anymore."

* * *

Yugi was staring again. It was becoming more than a little bothersome. The pest was looking at him like he'd grown a second head in the night, and it was getting old really fast. He knew he didn't smell. He showered just that morning, and anyway, no one else seemed to have a problem with him. Bakura kept to himself, and that was good enough for most students. They were scared enough of Bakura's warning growl to keep their distance.

Bakura drummed his pencil on his desk. Yugi was a mild annoyance and nothing more. His real problem had a hell of a lot more to do with shadows. This thing with getting Hikari out of the house was getting thornier and thornier.

He knew he could do better than some sort of compromise between the drain he felt with the sigils and the pain Hikari felt without them. There had to be a way to make the design better. Bakura was better than this.

But getting Hikari out was just one thing. Refining the design and improving the sigils would make it easier on Bakura, for certain, but it wouldn't be a real solution. Getting Hikari out of the house like that was a temporary work-around at best, and it was no better than putting a bandage over a problem when what it really needed was stitches.

What he really needed to do was sever the connection between Hikari and the house, somehow. And to do that, he needed to find out why it was that Hikari couldn't leave in the first place.

He sighed to himself. This would take more reading, he was sure. And since he'd picked his way through most of the section in the Necronomicon already, he wasn't sure how much good that particular work was going to do. Maybe it was time to go back to the _Compaendium_ …

He heard his name called and he glanced up. Naraki-sensei was looking at him, beckoning him to the front of the class. He glanced left and right. The other students were hard at work on their assignment. Naraki had never given a damn about whether or not Bakura had paid attention before, so Bakura didn't know what this could be about.

He made a slight face as he stood. Maybe Naraki had figured out that he wasn't allergic to anything and that his excuse yesterday was bullshit. As if Naraki would do anything about it though.

He stood in front of the desk.

"Yes?"

"Bakura, would you be able to stay after class today?" Naraki asked.

Bakura narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

"You aren't in trouble. I just have an assignment of yours that I need to go over with you. It shouldn't take too long, I promise."

Bakura tightened his expression but agreed. Resisting would seem more suspicious at this particular point. It was obvious enough that Naraki was lying. The slight flaring of nostrils and a downshift in how often he blinked was reason enough to suspect. This was not about some assignment.

Bakura smirked to himself. What was the worst thing that could happen? They'd suspend him? Oh no, a free opportunity to spend all day lounging in bed reading his black magic books. The horror.

After classes had finally finished and the final bell had rung, Bakura sat back in his desk as he watched the other students leave. Yugi couldn't stick around and chat, despite how much Bakura knew the kid must have wanted to talk. Bakura wasn't used to being the popular one. He didn't particularly enjoy it.

When the classroom was empty, Naraki finally glanced up. His red pen paused its grading. "Thank you for staying Mr. Kurokawa. Could you please shut the door for me?"

Bakura rolled his eyes but stood up anyway. He kicked the doorstop out of the way and let it fall shut. He started to turn.

Naraki was already standing, and he was smiling darkly. His eyes flashed bright orange. That was when Bakura noticed the huge ball of shadows coming right for him.

"Shit!" He jumped out of the way as two more were launched at him, crackling with residual darkness as they struck the wall and vanished. He dodged them too, and found himself right in the path of one more.

He brought his hands up and willed the shadows to stop in his hands. They curled obediently within his fingertips, and he hurled it back without hesitation.

Naraki snapped and it vanished before it could get anywhere near him.

"Good, good," Naraki said, strolling away from his desk. "Rough, but lots of potential. Lots to work with. Good."

"What the deuce?" Bakura snapped.

"How long have you been at it, kid?" Naraki continued.

What had Hikari said just that morning? Something about someone looking for shadowtouched?

Bakura snapped upright quickly and arranged his face into the most innocent mask he could muster. "Pardon? I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. Been at what?"

Naraki huffed and rolled his glowing orange eyes over dramatically, the way a teenage girl might. "You're almost a grown man. Don't play coy. You know what I'm talking about, shadowmage."

He pointed his finger at Bakura's chest and gave it a flick. The buttons on Bakura's uniform jacket popped open and the collar of his shirt dragged down low enough to show the edges of the red mark over his heart. The mark started to glow slightly and the shadows under the skin began to churn visibly. It flared briefly with a bit of pain.

Bakura gaped. He jerked the collar back up quickly. "The fuck, man!?"

"Obviously it hasn't been a long time," Naraki continued, "seeing as you clearly don't know much. I could tell that much from the moment you first stepped into my classroom. To be honest, I figured the ability was latent, and that you weren't even conscious of it. But you've learned to mask your presence, so clearly you know something."

"I don't know what the bloody hell you're talking about," Bakura snapped.

Naraki smirked. He had the look of a preening, pompous bird of paradise, particularly when he gave his fingers a sassy snap towards Bakura's face.

Something cold washed over his skin, targeting his eyes, and he felt a strange warm flicker within. The flow of magic cut off.

"Red. Interesting. It's pretty rare to get a color like that," Naraki continued. He clicked his fingers beside his own eyes, and their old brown color reappeared briefly before it melted like chocolate into a vaguely goldish color. "Orange for me. Not as unique, but it's good for blending in with our kind."

"Our... Kind?" Bakura asked. He glanced at his reflection in the glass of the window. Colors were hard to see, but the shape of his pupils was plain enough. Naraki had somehow cut the magic off. But how had he managed that?

Naraki made a face. "Huh. You really don't know anything. I thought you did. I'll have to ask about the eyes later..."

"Stop getting off topic," Bakura growled. "What the hell is going on?"

Naraki swept his arms outward and then snapped his fingers, letting a few tendrils of smoky black shadows curl just above the skin. Lines traced themselves onto the floor, leaving a smoking sigil on the cheap, scuffed tile. The shape of it was foreign, but appeared vaguely, unmistakably similar in origin to the mark on Bakura's chest. "I'm taking you under my wing, my shadowmage friend. I always did want a pupil, and you're making a mess of things as you are."

Bakura looked from the curling bits of shadow in Naraki's hands to the glowing orange eyes set into his face.

"I'll think about it."

Naraki sputtered and his shadows went out. The tile wiped clear. "What? Don't you want to do cool stuff like this?" He tried again with the shadow balls and made them spin in circles. It was like a juggling circus monkey.

Of course Bakura wanted to know how he did this. But he knew when he was in unknown waters, out of his depth. He knew when to tread more carefully around things when other people knew infinitely more than him. Hikari was a very unreliable source of knowledge, but was at least unlikely or incapable of turning on him.

Bakura set his expression and crossed his arms. How was he going to play this? Casual? Excited? Cautious? He had to decide what he wanted quickly.

It would be nice to have someone who knew this stuff. But then again, Bakura preferred working alone and already had more than enough tag-alongs to speak of. And on top of that, someone like this could probably kill him if he wasn't careful. It was difficult to navigate those particular waters and it would be nice if he didn't have to.

How much information could he pump out of Naraki in this tutorial stage, Bakura wondered, before he was forced to make a choice...?

He opened his mouth in artificial wonder, trying to channel some of the same joy that came from an amazed Hikari. "I just- wow! This is so much to take in. What did you call me? Shadow...?"

Naraki was visibly relieved. Hook, line, and sinker. "Shadowmage. One of our kind. My teacher told me when I was young and just starting out that we are unique in this world. The only beings who can harness the shadows beyond the veil. And we can do it all because of our special connection with the shadows that touch our hearts."

Bakura oohed and aahed as appropriate. "And you would be willing to teach me, no cost or anything? I'm here on scholarship after all. I can't afford to pay you."

Naraki smiled and nodded happily. "Yes, I can! You would just have to help with my rituals on occasion and do as I say. Shouldn't be a problem, right? It'll be just like normal school, except with more interesting subject matter."

Bakura nodded slowly. Shit. He could read between lines, and he wasn't so sure that he liked the payment cost.

Some of the rituals in the book, especially a few of the higher ones meant for powerful mages who no longer needed the sigils for most things, could get highly specific with their needs. That, or they asked for things like human souls and blood from a newly dead animal. And the drain from participating in them would be... severe, to say the least. He was already feeling the drain from his own explorations. Adding more could be too much.

He needed more time to think. He needed to stall Naraki. What else to ask? He quickly went over the conversation as it was in his head. Then he scowled. "What did you mean when I said I was making a mess of things?"

Naraki made a childish face. "You brought a shadowwatcher with you and you're going to get me in trouble if I don't help you get rid of him."

"What is a shadow-watcher?" Bakura asked.

"You really don't know anything, do you? Shadowwatchers are like cops. Except they don't think there's any good shadowmage except for one that's dead or on the force. Corrupt bunch of bureaucratic assholes..." Naraki started to mutter on and on.

"Well, you've got that wrong. I don't have anyone like that. Trust me, I would know if someone followed me here. They'd stick out like a sore thumb in England, or they'd stick out in Japan." Bakura grinned.

"Are you that dumb?" Naraki asked. He jerked his thumb toward Yugi's desk. "Kid sticks out in both places."

Bakura sputtered. That twerp was the one Naraki was concerned about? "Motou? I thought he was just annoying!"

"Oh, he's annoying," Naraki grumbled. "Making it hard for me to get anything done. I've lived here for two years, kept my head down, no watchers. Now you show up with one on your tail and I have to walk lightly and hope no one catches on."

Bakura stared at the table. That would explain some things, mainly why Yugi was so intent to pry. Maybe he could smell the magic on Bakura's skin, the way Hikari could. That would explain the jarring reaction when it was suddenly gone.

"What happens if Yugi... I don't know. Gets me? Or you?"

"They get you, then they're going to try to get you to come peacefully. If you resist, they'll try to shut that down with shadows. Then they'll give you the choice to join, becoming an obedient little worm the rest of your life, or die. They come for me... I bring down as many with me as I can before I go. And I'll probably take a few out, with any luck." Naraki wore a pleased grin that did not suit his narrow face.

"So watchers are dangerous to us... Good to know," Bakura said, nodding consideringly. He used the delay to run details over in his mind one last time.

Naraki wasn't making this up, as far as Bakura could tell. Hikari had mentioned being hunted, and the idea of the watchers was directly in line with that. But did he need Naraki's help? It went down to how big a deal these watchers were, and how much Naraki knew that wasn't in the books.

It was impossible to size Naraki up just by looking at him, but he was undeniably more experienced than Bakura and only expected to be able to resist a few of the watchers at most. But that wasn't the important thing Bakura had gotten from this.

Clearly, it was death or capture with the watchers, so Bakura could expect lethal force from them. But it didn't matter if he killed one or killed a dozen watchers to keep under the radar. There would be more to take their place, and they would not roll over so easily as that. Numbers would overwhelm any shadowtouched eventually.

So if he was in their range, he had to convince them of his innocence. Which meant, unfortunately, killing Yugi to rid himself of the problem wouldn't work. Bakura would have been okay with that. He'd had the mind to do so several times already before today, and this was just sort of the icing on the cake.

Well. No suspicious accidents for Yugi then. At least, not for a while. Bakura could also keep his head down for a while until Yugi left. Probably wouldn't take that long. But that was so slow, and Naraki seemed to have a mind to stop the problem quickly...

Which left just one thing.

"So, what kinds of things can I learn, if I wanted to join you?" Bakura asked.

Naraki drummed his fingers on his desk, wearing a Cheshire smile. "Everything, Mr. Kurokawa. Everything and anything. There are but a few limits to those who know how to take what they want or need."

Bakura blinked for a long moment, and then a lazy smirk drew across his face like a knife wound. "Really? Where do I sign up?"


	7. Chapter 7

"No no no no no!" Hikari growled.

It was a genuine, low, throaty sort of growl, absolutely bestial in nature, as though run through a horror movie voice filter to create the protests of a demon. Bakura had never seen Hikari's light look so dim before, save the night he'd burnt himself to a crisp.

"This is a terrible idea! You need to stop this right away!"

Bakura shook his head, still grinning. "Spooky. But sorry. No go. He already knows I can do this stuff, or at least have the potential to. He saw the eyes, the mark. And he knows things that I don't. I need to do this."

"But you said you would be helping with rituals. How do you know he's not just using you to feed the shadows? It's common enough. Shadowtouched have a long history of using others to empower them. There's just not enough for one body to give in some of these rituals. But with two..." Hikari shivered. "Who knows what evil things he can pull off?"

"It's not all evil-"

"Please," Hikari sighed. He drooped down, hovering mere inches above the carpet. "Please, don't. I beg you. You're already doing more than you should be. Your eyes are proof enough of this. I don't need to leave the house this badly. Too much further, and your soul will be unwelcome in both heaven and hell."

Bakura's lips twisted. "Hmm. That's not something you mentioned before."

Hikari jerked. "I remembered something!" he cried. "I remembered! I did! I did!" He began to bounce left and right.

Bakura stifled a snigger. "Well, as _wonderful_ as it is to see you like this, I think I'll take my leave now."

"Wait!" Hikari cried to Bakura's back. "Bakura, wait!"

He smirked as he closed the door behind him.

* * *

He slunk into the classroom with a small flicker of his eyes.

There was a trick Bakura learned long ago, when he was about thirteen. There were times when one needed to see everything at once, without betraying one's own interest. It was a useful little trick. It had already come in handy many times, and now was no exception.

His eyes, dulled to rust by the dark power, ran over the entirety of the room with a quick twitch.

The desk in the far front corner sat empty; Naraki-sensei wasn't in yet. Half of the desks were filled with sleepy-eyed students conversing in low, burbling tones. Ryou Yamata's desk still sat noticeably empty. As for Yugi, he was half-asleep at his own desk, his head canted and weighing heavily on the palm of his open hand. He yawned and slumped further down.

Bakura pursed his lips. If only the brat could have taken a sick day. But Yugi didn't look up when Bakura sat down.

Naraki smirked only once when he entered the room, so briefly that it was scarcely noticeable. He didn't say a thing about yesterday as he started class and worked his way through the first lesson of the day.

It wasn't until after lunch that Bakura got any sign of acknowledgment of yesterday. As Naraki returned graded assignments, Bakura noticed a small slip of paper tucked between a few other sheets. It had an address and a time and nothing else.

Bakura glanced up at the desk at the front of the room. Naraki's face split into a cheshire grin. Bakura resisted narrowing his eyes, choosing instead to fold the slip of paper in half and then quarters and tuck it away in a pocket with a half nod. Seven o'clock at what was most likely Naraki's own home, if Bakura was right about the area of town.

In his gut, he felt a twinge of distrust. His instincts had never let him down before. He would have to be careful.

Yugi tapped him on the shoulder after class.

As he turned, he looked Yugi over once more with a quick flicker of eyes. He didn't seem like much for a shadowwatcher.

"What do you want, Mouto?"

"You look like you're feeling better today," Yugi said with a smile. "I was wondering, after class tomorrow, would you want to-"

"Don't you have detention to go to right now?" Bakura interrupted. He narrowed his eyes, and Yugi sighed.

"Yes. That is true. See you tomorrow, Kurokawa-kun," Yugi muttered, gathering his things. Bakura smiled as he started to go, but Yugi paused.

"Why do you hate me so much?" Yugi asked. His fingers wrung out the air between them in a little flick. Yesterday's conversation with Naraki was still fresh in his mind, but there were many more reasons than that.

Bakura sneered. "A little prat like you? I hate your kind. You think you can fix people who don't need fixing and befriend people who don't want friends. We're different people, Mouto. That's all there is to it."

Yugi frowned. "Interesting," he said after a long pause. "That's… it?"

"That's it," Bakura said.

Yugi nodded. "I see. You know, contrary to what you might think, the world doesn't hate you, and you don't need to hate the world either. Just… remember that. Please," Yugi said. His violet eyes widened imploringly, flickering to red for the barest instant.

"Detention?" Bakura reminded him, and he shooed Yugi away with his fingers.

"Bye, Kurokawa-kun."

Naraki flicked his fingers at Yugi's back as he walked out of the room. "Kurokawa," he said. "Come here."

"What?" Bakura asked. He leaned against Naraki's desk.

"I want to show you something. Watch," he said, gesturing at the door. It closed. He drew out a circular wooden dish with a shallow bottom and a crystal flask from his bottom drawer. Inside the flask, a translucent liquid sloshed with a faintly golden gleam.

He unstoppered the flask and dumped it into the bowl.

"And this is…?" Bakura asked.

"I said watch. This will be your first lesson. I heard you and the brat talking. You could have handled it better, but it could have been worse too. Let's just see…" He waved his hand over the bowl.

Bakura leaned in. At first, he could only see the mirror-like reflections of himself and Naraki. But the image wavered as Naraki continued to move his hand in circles above it. Their faces faded, replaced by what resembled the school's hallway. Yugi came into sight.

"What!?" Bakura said, and Naraki chuckled.

"Scrying. Planted a bug on the kid. It'll only last a few more minutes but… Aha," he said, as Yugi looked left and right evasively. Yugi ducked into a supply closet and closed the door right behind him.

"But how-"

"Shhh. Just watch for now. I can explain later," Naraki said. "You'll understand everything soon enough."

Yugi checked the door knob and wedged a broom under it so that it wouldn't be able to open from the outside. After this was in place, he shrugged his shoulders and stretched.

"Okay," he said. "You're clear."

"What is he doing…?" Bakura asked, only to be shushed by Naraki. Bakura leaned in closer.

Mist gathered in the room, causing the image to ripple faintly. Inside of the brewing fog, something appeared to be gathering, coalescing into a dark shape lurking within.

Yugi banished the mist with a wave of his hand. A man was left standing behind him.

"How?!" Bakura asked. Naraki shushed him once more.

"Yugi," the man intoned. His voice was pitched a bit deeper than Yugi's, but they could have passed for siblings. Twins, even, if not for the stark difference in their heights. Both had the same strange, spiked and multicolored hair. The man's skin, however, was slightly darker, as though colored by the kiss of the sun.

Bakura peered closer into the bowl. It was just as he thought. The man's eyes were the same shade of red as Yugi's had been a few days ago.

Curious.

Both leaned against the shelving units inside of the utility closet, choosing walls opposite one another. Yugi fiddled with a spray bottle of glass cleaner.

"I don't know what to think, Atem. A part of me wants to just say he's the one we've been looking for, but some things just aren't adding up," Yugi said, twisting the nozzle first one direction, then the next.

The man shrugged. "He did reek of magic the day after your classmate vanished. Then the next day, he did not. He might have been masking himself, especially if he suspects us."

"I know that," Yugi insisted. "But it doesn't necessarily prove anything. Uninitiated fluctuate all the time. It doesn't mean he's come to terms with his abilities. He could know nothing and might never figure it out."

"What's stopping you? A more direct approach would finish this today. He'll be one of us or dead by morning."

"Exactly. If we're wrong and he manages to survive, it might ruin his life," Yugi said hollowly. He set the bottle aside. His foot scuffed along the floor, narrowly missing a broomstick. "We can't decide for him like this. If he's just a mortal, he deserves his quiet life. He doesn't need to be burdened with this."

The man's hard expression softened to something more tender. "Do you regret what you have done?"

"Never," Yugi said firmly. "I want to help. But rushing this won't help anything. We do this right, by the the books. Anyway. I wanted to tell you, Kurokawa-kun wasn't lying when he said he didn't like me for those petty reasons. But he was when he said that those reasons were the only ones."

"So he knows about us and distrusts us?" Atem surmised.

Yugi shook his head. "Again, not necessarily. We know that Kurokawa-kun is, at the very least, an uninitiate. Even if he hasn't come into his powers, he's been exposed to the darkness, knowingly or not. His past is stained by it. That kind of thing… It traumatizes mortals."

Yugi paused and looked at Atem sideways.

"I don't know how it is for your kind, but for us humans… It's a painful thing, being exposed. He could just be lashing out to me as a person, not as a shadowwatcher. He doesn't acknowledge other people any more or less, save for those as rude or crass as him. He's just as likely to dislike Yugi the friendly classmate as he is to be wary of Yugi the shadowwatcher."

"So we're still no closer to resolving this case," Atem said. His expression soured. "Wonderful."

"You're getting much better at sarcasm, you know," Yugi said with a half smile.

Atem chuckled. "Well, thank you, aibou. Wait. Hold on a moment," he said suddenly, sniffing at the air like an animal. Bakura caught a glimpse of something black and shiny peeking out from inside the mess of multicolored hair.

The image inside of the bowl wavered.

"What is it, Atem?" Yugi asked as his voice began to distort. The image grew more indistinct, darkening.

"There's someone watching-" Atem got out, before the reflection winked out of sight like an old cathode tv picture. Bakura was left peering at his own reflection in the now-calm water within.

Bakura was silent.

"Interesting. They don't know if they need to suspect you or not. We should let them keep thinking you're an uninitiate. It works out better for all of us."

Bakura's lips twitched into a snarl.

"Explain," Bakura growled. "Those morons are going to kill me as soon as they realize I want no part with them. I think I deserve some goddamn answers! Like, whatever they called me. Start with that."

"Fine. Uninitiate. A shadowtouched who hasn't come into their powers yet, as in 'not yet initiated', so to speak. These are innocents who've touched the shadows due to some incident or another but cannot manipulate them, and don't even know of their existence at all. They can see some of the effects at the periphery of their gaze, but it is weak and a pale imitation of our current abilities."

"Me before the mark, then," Bakura said, and Naraki nodded.

"Exactly. The mark is your initiation into the world, in a sense. It tethers you to the shadows and lets you access them the way you can now. And while you're an unmarked initiate, we aren't supposed to interfere unless that status changes and you're marked. Every Mark is different. One day, you may even learn what yours means."

"Fine. I understand that. Who was that guy with Motou? That… Atem or whatever."

Naraki wore a look of the purest revulsion. "Aberration and sin, that's what."

"... Care to run that by me one more time?" Bakura said.

"Demon. The most repulsive, disgusting, infuriating creature to crawl out of the pits of hell. And Motou's got one as a goddamned pet."

* * *

"A demon!?" Hikari yelped.

"That's what Naraki said. Oh. And my first lesson is tonight at seven. I forgot to mention that."

"Tonight?" Hikari was shaking. "Don't you think you're moving a bit fast?"

"Course not. If these shadowwatchers really want to kill me, I need to learn everything I can as quickly as I can."

"Hold on, there are shadowwatchers too?!" Hikari cried out. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

"What have _I_ gotten myself into? I haven't done anything. Naraki's been here for a while, I bet he's the one Yugi's looking for," Bakura said.

He sat back in his desk chair, thumbing through the Necronomicon once again. He didn't pay it much mind. It still made his head throb vaguely with an indescribable dull ache. But the pictures were interesting. Terrifying, gruesome, and stained with all manner of blood and viscera, but undoubtedly interesting.

Hikari trembled. "Then it's simple, isn't it? We tell Yugi that it's Naraki. Both of them leave, and we can focus on the matter with the chest. Then we're all done here."

Bakura closed the book. "And then how will I learn anything? Naraki wants to teach me. He actually knows this stuff. Off the top of his head, I might add, unlike a certain someone…" He trailed off with a pointed look.

Hikari huffed.

"And if I told Yugi, that would inspire a wide variety of questions regarding how I know this information and why I didn't step forward sooner. Isn't that right?"

Hikari was silent for a long while, before he grudgingly sighed. "I suppose that's true. But still, is it really that necessary to learn under your teacher? The books have everything you need to know, I think…"

Bakura rolled his eyes. "Because they've helped with everything before. I wouldn't know half of what I do now without Naraki. I wouldn't know what Yugi was or even that there are others like me. I'll use Naraki for as long as it's beneficial, and then I'll figure out a way to throw him under the bus when the time comes. Get rid of both of them at the same time. Two birds one stone, right?"

"Still. I don't think it's a good idea to have so many shadow users in one place. Bad things will happen."

Bakura lifted one eyebrow. "Meaning?" He opened the _Compaendium_ and thumbed through.

Hikari shivered. He was vibrating again, quivering in the air at such a high frequency that it was nauseating for Bakura to look at.

"You don't remember, do you?" Bakura asked.

Hikari puffed up. "If I keep talking I'll remember. It has something to do with demons and…"

Bakura brushed the air away with an errant flick of the fingers. "Have fun with that."

"Misery…" Hikari muttered. He puttered around the room and continued mouthing words to himself until seven, when he looked up and realized that Bakura was long gone.

* * *

This was the place.

He looked left and then right up the desolate street. He'd never seen a stretch of road look so empty, and he'd never felt an emptiness with such a heavily sinister feeling of the void.

Bakura clenched his hands into fists and crossed the street. There was no need to check the address. This was definitely the place.

Like Bakura, Naraki seemed to have managed to find a house for himself. It was a ramshackle mess, barely maintained, but it looked like it wouldn't fall down in the next hour or two. Hopefully. At the very least, Bakura had slept in far worse back in England, with much less pleasant company. Naraki seemed exactly the type to stab someone in the back, but he also seemed genuinely excited at the prospect of teaching. Despite Hikari's fears, Naraki wasn't dangerous. Yet.

He rang the doorbell and waited. After a delay, he rang the bell again and then again, only for his hand to freeze in place before he could touch the button a fourth time. The door opened with a creak.

"Would you stop that?" Naraki snapped.

Bakura grinned. "Why, am I annoying you?" he asked. Naraki glowered and stepped aside, holding the door open.

"Just get in here. The brat didn't follow you, did he?" Naraki asked. His eyes shifted along the street's periphery.

Bakura shrugged. "Mouto? Haven't seen him." He'd wondered the same thing himself, but unless Mouto was capable of silently tracking someone who didn't want to be followed in the first place, he wasn't here.

"Fine. Let's get started then." Naraki led Bakura into the house. Just inside, the lights were on but dim. Half of the bulbs had burnt out, and a few others flickered with the threat of joining the dead. The only steady light came from a bottle blue orb in the corner, and everything took on a sickening cast because of it.

Naraki made no attempt to hide what he was and what he did. Unidentifiable metallic objects gleamed in the half light, glinting with the suggestion of arcane runes carved into their outsides. The tables were strewn with detritus and arcana in every direction he turned: half-filled bottles of colored liquid, strangely tinted powders piled on scraps of ragged oilcloth, twigs with unusual leaves and bristling with poisonous-looking berries, and more.

Among the mess were daggers laid out here and there. Some were cleaner than others, and some were crusted over with something of a familiar rusty red color.

"That's no way to care for a knife," Bakura said, grabbing one and turning it this way and that.

Naraki snatched it away. "What do you know about knives, boy?"

Bakura drew a knife from his boot and flicked it open with a small click. He began to spin it through his fingers in motions that made the gesture seem effortless. "Benchmade 62 Balisong butterfly. Sturdy, graceful, nice action in the joints. Stainless steel. Little pricy but worth it." He recited as he played, twirling the blade over his knuckles and again and again through his fingers.

He stopped suddenly with an impish grin.

"I could grab the others from home."

"Hmm. That won't be necessary," Naraki said, giving a lingering look at the butterfly knife.

Bakura gave it a few more spins through his fingers before snapping it closed with a flick.

Naraki's lips tightened into a smirk. "Anyway. I suppose you must have a few questions, and I imagine you haven't seen almost any of these little toys here, so I'll give you a few minutes to poke around my home and ask any questions you might have. Then we'll get started on your lesson."

Bakura glanced around briefly without moving. The toys didn't interest him half as much as the books had. "Do humans have souls?" he asked.

"Good question. It's a topic that's up for a lot of debate, depending on who you ask and what your particular stance on philosophy is, but as far as you'll be concerned, yes, humans have souls. In a sense. See, what we call souls is an animating force that represents our consciousness. It isn't a tangible concept until you've been exposed to the shadows-"

"So if we have souls, what can we do with them?" Bakura interrupted.

Naraki's orange colored eyes seemed to spark. "Oh? You are a naughty one, aren't you. Soul manipulation is illegal under the shadowwatcher tenants of protocol. Which mean we won't start it till after next week. If you're still interested of course. But why souls?"

"Religious parents," Bakura lied easily. "Always said my immortal soul was damned. Guess they were right."

Naraki laughed. Bakura nodded slowly. Let Naraki think what he would. But it was time to take a step back now, before Bakura was too obvious. Naraki thought him completely ignorant, and who was Bakura to let him down so early? And anyway, there were other questions that needed to be answered, things that were certainly not in any of the books.

"What are the 'Shadowwatcher Tenants of Protocol' you mentioned?" Bakura asked.

"Rules they put out for us to follow. Don't break the rules, they won't usually mess with you. Break the rules, knowingly or not, and they won't be happy."

"Have you been breaking many rules?" Bakura asked with a grin.

"You've broken them too, boy," Naraki shot back. "In fact, following them is nearly impossible. So we're not going to worry about them for now. Any more questions?"

Bakura hummed and began to meander through the house. He poked the strange metal things and fiddled with a few of the colorful phials. There were too many things to ask about all at once.

As he passed a door, he felt a chill race down his spine. He paused. There was an energy inside, just beyond the doorway, that Bakura couldn't describe. It was like an icy fist grabbing hold of his heart and then giving it a vicious jerk. He reached for the doorknob, but his hand was smacked away. Naraki was livid.

"That is the only area of my house that is off-limits," he said sharply. "You're free to wander everywhere else, but downstairs is where I keep my… projects. It's delicate work, and I can't have an apprentice like you messing them up. Maybe someday I'll bring you down there, but not today, and not for the forseeable future. And if I find you down there, you will regret it dearly. Understand?"

Naraki's tone had gotten progressively sterner, until he was finally speaking through clenched teeth. Bakura backed away with his hands up, an attempt at appeasement. "Fine, fine. No basement. So..." He smiled and put down his hands. "What is our first lesson?"

Naraki cracked his knuckles. "You aren't going to be any help to me until I can get a better idea of the limits of your control and your power. We're going to run through a few tests. Now first, I'm going to need you to..."

* * *

Three hours later, Bakura was ready to drop. He hadn't been this exhausted since the incident with the sigils and the posterboard, except this time, he was just a bit further from his room. He made it back to his house without a problem, but stopped just outside the front door. It wasn't even eleven yet, but if he awoke his aunt, he'd have to put up with her yelling and disappointment and it was all more than Bakura felt like dealing with right now.

He twisted his key into the lock as quietly as he could. Despite the heaviness in his limbs, he had to keep his footsteps light. Up the stairs, into his room. He closed his door behind him and leaned against it heavily. It was the first time he realized that he was short of breath.

"Bakura! You're okay!" Hikari sounded endlessly relieved. "I was worried you wouldn't come back!"

"Of course I came back," Bakura scoffed, sinking to the floor. He rubbed his fists into his eyes, groaning softly.

"Bakura... what happened to you?" Hikari's voice was softer now, and he drifted close. His light flickered and dimmed a bit, and for that, Bakura was relieved. The harsh brightness was too much after the darkness of the rest of the house.

"It was just a few tests. Had me summon a few shadow balls. Hold them up, move them in directions he wanted me to move them. Then I had to sustain a shadow tear for as long as I could. Hey, know what a shadow tear is?" Bakura asked with a grin.

"It's..." Hikari muttered. "No, don't tell me... A shadow tear is a rip in reality, isn't it?"

Bakura nodded, tightening his lips. "They're an access point to the shadow realm, where all of our powers come from. Apparently I've got 'real potential'. Naraki looked pretty damned surprised when I kept it up for an hour."

"Gracious gods, an hour?! What if you let something in? There are creatures in the shadow realm, demons and monsters and-"

Bakura lifted his hands, cutting Hikari off. "Hey, I read the book. Something did get through. Naraki lured it through. Apparently he needed a bit of Amaimonette breath for some experiment or another. Little ugly demon thing. Brought it through the shadow tear and imprisoned it in a circle we made up. It was fantastic," Bakura said. His grin was dangerously wide.

"Bakura!" Hikari cried out. "You summoned a demon? You need to stop this immediately!"

"Why?" Bakura asked. He stared up at Hikari with that same crazy grin on his face. "This is great!"

"There are too many shadow users in this area right now. If you, Yugi, and Naraki are all going to stay in Domino, we need to ward the place up or something, because otherwise, we're all going to be overrun. Things will open their own shadow tears and break into this world!" Hikari said.

The glow started to brighten until it was blindingly harsh, even through Bakura's closed eyelids.

"All of these shadows will wreck havoc on the area. You were joking about my forgetting, but I remember this much: all sorts of monsters are going to want to feed off the shadows and the misery and pain of the people who live here. I don't know what Naraki is up to, but he's dangerous. We can't let him continue like this. I won't deny that his uses for magic are appealing to certain people, but you must temper it with control, or none of us will live to see another year. Getting me out of the house won't matter when everyone else is dead."

Hikari's impassioned speech left Bakura silent on the floor.

Hikari started to dim again, and the lashing silver tendrils began to slow.

"Regardless of whether or not the two of them pose a direct threat to you, we must get them to leave, or we might have to go somewhere else. The threat exists for as long as all three of you are in the same vicinity. Apprenticeships among shadowtouched are brief and mobile things, traveling the world constantly to prevent this exact thing. Just please, rethink telling Yugi."

"And you remembered all of this while I was gone?" Bakura asked. "Just what were you before your soul was ripped out?"

"I don't know. That's the one thing I can't remember. And believe me, I've been trying," Hikari said. He sounded sad, so very sad.

"Look, you've got to have some kind of ties to the shadowtouched to know all this. If you remember more and decide to share with the class, then I can ditch Naraki and save the effort of lying to him for gods know how long this will take. But until then, until you're free from this house, until I have a better idea what the hell is actually going on here, I'm going to stick with Naraki. Is that alright?"

Hikari shuffled back and forth without saying anything. "I don't like this," he said. He flickered out of sight.

* * *

The next few days passed with no sight of Hikari. It wasn't that Bakura was worried about the disappearance. He just didn't know if something bad had happened or not. He certainly wasn't worried, despite what his mind's constant jumps might have indicated.

He didn't think about Hikari during class, while Naraki lectured about Classical Japanese architecture. He certainly didn't wonder about how exactly Hikari could know all of the things that he did, but couldn't remember how he knew them.

It was another puzzle to crack. Bakura never did like puzzles he couldn't solve. There was an answer somewhere in all of this mess, he knew, but Hikari wasn't exactly forthcoming about these things.

Now that Bakura was on 'probation' or whatever Hikari was planning on calling this when (or if) he came back, he had to admit one thing: it was awfully quiet without the little wisp around.

Naraki's nightly lessons pushed him further than he'd ever expected every night, and when he came back, breathless and clutching his aching head, there was no one to regale with the things he had accomplished.

Oh, and what accomplishments Bakura had made. He absorbed instruction like a sponge, taking in every word Naraki said and filing it away for later use.

Naraki was blithe and a bit air-headed when it came right down to it. His lessons weren't actually that useful alone. Bakura already knew how to do most of the basic spells Naraki had planned out, which left him wondering how long it would take before they got to anything new. Naraki was much more focused on pushing Bakura to grow stronger, the way a runner trained for marathons. The work was difficult, but left his mind free to analyze every little thing Naraki mentioned.

Naraki was fond of side comments. There were things he'd mutter under his breath, things that Bakura wouldn't really understand always. Whether they were important or just Naraki's mumbled musings, it didn't much matter.

Everything had something to do with the shadows, and Bakura needed to know more. Naraki's lessons weren't enough. They touched on blood-bound promises, which would only be broken by penalty of death, and on the connections of sigils. That had been just last night.

"Is there any way to make the sigils more powerful? Like, make them… I don't know… more efficient?" Bakura had asked.

Naraki's glowing orange eyes flashed consideringly. "It all depends, of course. Sigils alone are powerful, it is true. But it is the way that you can connect sigils which allows you to reach their greatest potential. The connections needed depend entirely on your choice of sigils. Let me show you," he said.

Naraki knelt down in the center of his living room, drawing a few concentric circles with quick strokes of a stick of chalk. The thin lines were joined by a many-pointed star laid over the top. At five points around the circle, he drew half-circles that bubbled up from the outermost ring.

With all of this done, Naraki gestured to the first bubble around the circle.

"Different arrangements mean different things. Think of magic like a language. A circle like this one is a sentence, a way of writing down exactly what you want to say. You can take the same handful words, but it's the order of them that impacts the meaning."

He drew runic characters inside of four of the bubbles, pausing at the last one.

"Only she loves him," he said, and he added in the final few strokes.

A vaguely green aura began to glimmer from the lines. A certain iridescence glittered up, bringing with it a beam of distinct green light to rise all the way up to the ceiling. He let it stand for several seconds before swiping his hand over two symbols, switching their order.

"She only loves him," Naraki muttered.

The light was thrown up once again, but this time the color was less green and more blue. Or perhaps the color was somewhere in between the two shades, a wavering aqua rather like the ocean.

Two more symbols were switched, and the color plunged to a dim violet. "She loves only him," Naraki added. He erased all of them, and then rewrote the same symbols in a completely new arrangement. "He loves only her."

The color of this arrangement was a bright, fiery orange. Naraki pursed his lips as he looked at the flickering hues.

"As you can see, all of these sentences mean different things. Similarly, all of these arrangements have different results when you draw them out. You could be using all of the right words, but if the arrangement is wrong, you'd never achieve much of anything."

"How do I know what the right arrangement is?" Bakura asked.

"Simple. I'll tell you. Really, though, it's all a matter of experience. You don't come out of the womb stringing together coherent sentences, and you don't come into your powers knowing how to arrange sigils in an arcane circle."

Bakura nodded. "Alright. So, say I had made up a circle, and it wasn't working right. I rearrange the symbols, and through trial and error, figure out how they fit together best. Is there rhyme or reason to how they go together?"

Naraki considered his words for several long moments, tapping at his chin as he thought. Finally, he brought his finger down to the circle.

"See here," he said, moving his finger an inch above the line which connected two sigils. "These two are not adjacent, but are tied. This means the symbols refer back to one another. If I erase this line…" he mumbled, breaking one of the points of the star.

The orange color darkened suddenly, pitching into a bloody red color.

"There," he said. "Without the reference, it means yet something else. I may have a book somewhere that talks about… hmmm… I suppose it is the grammar of arcane circles. It tells when to use the lines, when to place symbols adjacent, and so on and so forth, all based off of their meanings."

Naraki rose to his feet and began to pick his way past a heavy bookshelf. The books were moldering and the spines sagged in the few places where they weren't packed tight. His finger ghosted over the faded gold and silver leaf that was inlaid into the leather bindings.

"It's a bit tricky, of course, but this should tell you everything you need to know-" he continued to ramble as he looked. Finally, he drew a rather large and dusty book from the shelf. It was clasped with metal at the corners, and the leather was a dark tan color.

Naraki held it up for Bakura to examine. The front cover read 'The Grammaerian for Basick Magycks' in a curling, elegant hand.

"This will have information on everything you need to know, plus a dictionary of sigils for reference."

"Great," Bakura said, and he clenched his teeth. "Can I put this down now?"

Naraki looked at the large box which was hanging, suspended, in the air, rippling faintly with curling tendrils of shadows holding it up. He clucked his tongue and set the book aside on an open swathe of coffee table.

"Nope, keep holding it up. Only way to get stronger," Naraki said.

That was last night though.

Bakura sighed and tapped his pencil against his desk.

After that session with Naraki, he'd rushed home, but there was no Hikari anywhere to be seen. He recounted the story to open air in an attempt to draw Hikari out, but even after an hour of explaining exactly how the book would help get Hikari out of the house, Bakura had given up.

He spent the rest of the night reading by lamplight through the chapters, finding the definitions of each of the individual sigils and the right ways to string them together. There were two possibilities, and Bakura wasn't sure which was better.

There was enough posterboard left to try both out, so it wasn't the issue that Bakura was concerned about. No, his only concern, and he wasn't concerned, was where Hikari had gone.

If the little wisp didn't return…

Well, what would even be the point of all of this? Aside from the fun of it all, of course. Bakura kinda liked having the little guy around to talk with, and messing with him was pretty fun too.

There were only so many places that Hikari could hide. Bakura would bet anything that the little ghostie was hiding up in the attic. If Hikari wasn't going to come to him, maybe he would have to go to Hikari.

* * *

He left the classroom in a hurry that afternoon, not even sparing Yugi a glance as he snagged his bag and rushed towards the school gates.

He was panting when he unlocked his front door, having run all the way from the train station. His aunt called out to him, but he ignored her. He needed to find Hikari and try this out. He twisted his fingers and jerked them down, and the shadows did his bidding, pulling down the attic ladder before he had even made it all the way into the room.

He tossed the bag aside and clamored up. "Hikari, get down here. I'm sorry, alright? Is that what you want me to say? Come out here and talk to me," he said as he poked his head up.

The deathly chill was heavy in the air. He threw up a ball of light into the air, and the rays of light caught on the thick motes of swirling dust. His eyes narrowed.

"Hikari," he barked sharply. "Come on, you wisp, you know this isn't that big of a deal, right? Come on out. You really want to hear this. Don't you want to leave this place?"

He looked the room over carefully, trying to find some trace of Hikari's presence. The lines were still carved deeply into the old wooden floor, winding this way and that in strange loops and whorls. A few of the symbols looked vaguely familiar in a new way, something fresh in his mind. One symbol, he was sure he recognized. The primary meaning, out of many lesser implied meanings, was something approximate to 'cloaked, hidden, secret'.

He narrowed his eyes at the chest. There was nothing for it. He clenched his hand into a fist, and the light suddenly extinguished. The darkness swooped in from the edges of the attic, devouring everything faster than the blink of an eye. He closed his eyes. The slow dilation of pupils was a necessary evil, but when he finally opened up his eyes, the all-powerful darkness had lessened by faint degrees. The hard edges of the boxes and storage had softened in the gloom.

And there, nestled in the deepest crook near the chest, was a faint silver glow. Bakura smirked and felt his way over. He stuck his head into the shadows, bringing himself face to face, or rather, face to silver tendrils, with the little wisp.

"There you are, Hikari. Hey, I told you I was sorry. I know you aren't happy with me, but I think I found a way to get you out of here, if you're willing to try?" he let his voice curl up questioningly.

Hikari looked shocked. "Are you talking to me?" he asked, but his tone wasn't accusing. In fact, it was curiously light. Pure surprise.

"Of course I am. You see anyone else up here?" Bakura asked, laughing. He threw a light ball up behind him, bringing the attic back to the edge of darkness. As expected, they were completely alone.

Hikari drew himself out slowly, turning this way and that, and then looking up at the light with undisguised fascination. "I suppose..." he muttered. "But... I- I'm sorry. Who are you?" he asked.


	8. Chapter 8

"Who are you?"

The words wracked through his head again and again, haunting like ghosts in his memories. Hikari had forgotten? It was inconceivable. But after a few pressing questions, Bakura was starting to suspect that Hikari had forgotten everything, blank slate. He didn't even remember his own name.

He coaxed Hikari out of the attic, and they were now back in Bakura's room. The ghostie looked this way and that, taking everything in with a sense of wonderment.

"It's so nice to be able to talk with someone finally," he babbled on and on, Bakura watching. "And what was your name?"

"Come on. Don't tell me you forgot my name too," Bakura accused.

"Forgot? But we've never met before," Hikari mused. "At least I-" he paused, and the pale silvery color flickered for an instant. "I think-"

Bakura blinked, realization washing over him suddenly. "Wait, come on, try and remember. Think hard. Bakura. Do you remember me? Do you remember what I promised you?"

Hikari flickered again, and the tendrils jerked. "I- I don't-" he mumbled, but he was unsure.

"Think back. You're losing your memories somehow, aren't you? But they were coming back," Bakura said. "So why are they gone again?"

"I don't know," Hikari said. "I swear I've never seen you before, but…" He slowed his bobbing, stilling in the stagnant air. The little wisp glanced at the watery sunlight filtering through the window, and then back up at Bakura. "You seem… familiar to me…"

"That's it, come on. It's there, isn't it? What's your name?" Bakura urged.

Hikari dithered in the air. "You called me Hikari… Didn't you? Hikari… Meaning light…"

Bakura nodded. "Yes, and my name?"

"You told me already. Bakura. It is… You are…" Hikari trailed off. "You are… My friend. Right?" He turned to face Bakura, and there was something frightened in his slow stirring.

"Well, I guess so," Bakura said. "I mean…" Bakura broke off.

He wasn't really big on the whole 'friend' thing. Best he usually had were temporary alliances and such. But things were different with Hikari. It was strange. He didn't despise spending time with the little wisp.

And if the last few days had been any indication, then he had actually kinda missed the little guy. At least, he found himself thinking 'I should tell Hikari' whenever something interesting happened, only to remember that Hikari wasn't speaking to him.

Was that friendship? Then again, did it matter what he thought, when it was about getting Hikari back to normal? Hikari would almost definitely call them friends. That was what was important right now, right?

Bakura nodded. "Yes. We were friends. And I'm terribly offended that you would just forget me like this," he teased, grinning.

Hikari flushed. "I'm so sorry. I'm trying to remember…" Hikari grumbled softly to himself, curling in on himself in that way that seemed like someone pounding their fists against their temples. But of course, Hikari had neither of these things. And so he vaguely curled inwards.

"What did I promise you?" Bakura said.

Hikari moaned unhappily. "I'm trying, I- I can't- I just-"

"What do you want more than anything?" Bakura said, leaning in closer. He let the rust colored masking fall away from his eyes so they would glow with their new red color. "What did I swear we would do?"

"We… Would…" Hikari mumbled, whipping this way and that. He stilled suddenly, his chime-like voice suddenly bursting out into laughter. "I would be free!" he cried out, launching himself against Bakura.

Hikari's body felt slightly denser than air when he embraced Bakura, glowing brightly and laughing like silvery bells. The temperature plunged, but Bakura willing allowed the little wisp to embrace him, enfolding him in the mess of silver tendrils. They trailed against his skin and left prickles of goosebumps in their wake.

"Oh Bakura, Bakura!" he cried joyously. "I remember. I remember you, your promise! Thank you! Thank you." Hikari's voice cracked slightly. If Bakura didn't know better, he'd have suspected that Hikari was sniffling. "You said you found something?"

"You aren't mad at me?" Bakura asked, and Hikari seemed to glare.

"Oh, I'm still furious at you and your stupidity. But this is great news! What have you discovered?"

Bakura shook his head. "No, first, what the hell just happened? Why did you forget everything like that?"

Hikari drew up short, shrugging. "I… I don't know. It just… Got away from me. Same as everything else. But I…" Hikari paused, then looked back at Bakura. "Please. Just hurry. I don't want to stay here any longer. What did you find?"

"I have this book," Bakura said, holding up the Grammaerian. "Combining it with the Compaendium, I figured out two possible ways to get you out of the house. We can try both, and then whatever works best, we can do more tests with. I have a day off soon. We can take a train and wander around," Bakura suggested. Quietly, he muttered, "and make some money…"

Hikari bounced. "Yes, yes! Let's try it! Oh, I can't wait! Thank you so much!" He swayed back and forth through the room, glowing with joy. He paused for one instant. "You have no idea what this means to me, Bakura. I'm so glad you're my friend." Giddy, he couldn't manage to hold still for a second longer.

Bakura half-smiled in spite of himself. "You're welcome, wisp."

* * *

He gathered up the posterboard and supplies and got to work very soon after things had calmed down once more, referencing the notes he had made to make sure he was doing everything correctly.

Like Naraki had suggested, the order of the sigils was all-important, but then, so were the references. The star needed a certain number of points, but not all of the lines necessarily needed to bisect the full circle. Only where the sigils needed to reference one another from across the circle. It was tricky but Bakura thought he'd figured out two possible solutions that would work.

The first arrangement called for the removal of one line and the full rearrangement of sigils. The second had a similar ordering to the first, but with two sigils swapped and several more lines dropped. He drew them both up over the span of a few hours, taking a break only for dinner.

His aunt chatted his ear off about this and that going on in the neighborhood, and something interesting too, that one of their neighbors had to say about the house. Bakura tuned in as soon as he noticed where his aunt was headed with this.

"Haunted?" He barked out a cold laugh. "That's crazy. The neighbors have no idea what they're talking about."

Aunt Aiko frowned. "She seemed very insistent…"

Bakura rolled his eyes, shoveling more rice into his mouth. He spoke with his mouth full. "We'd know by now if this place was haunted, wouldn't we? I mean, it's been…" He trailed off, his aunt suddenly giggling a bit.

"You're right," she said, visibly relieved. "It's been a month since we moved in. Something would have happened by now."

Bakura froze, another mouthful of rice halfway between his mouth and his bowl. "A month?" he said, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that his aunt was right. It had been almost a full month since they'd moved in.

Bakura hadn't done anything particularly illegal that whole time. It was a new record. He scowled into his bowl. He'd have to fix that, soon as Hikari was out of the house. He'd test the two arcane circles tonight, and as long as they didn't blow up in his face, he'd be running about tomorrow afternoon.

There were pockets to pick and stores to lift from. He smirked to himself and continued eating.

Later, as night settled over the neighborhood, Bakura snagged the container of salt and the two boards and set up on the porch, all of the lights extinguished. He worked by the light of Hikari, marveling at the convenience of a light only he could see.

He grabbed the first, arranged the ring of salt along the outermost line of the board, and then in quick succession finished each mark on the board. There was a sudden twinge of the shadows, flowing through him and radiating out through the lines of the circle.

Not too bad. He grinned. "I can do this, no problem. Hop in," he said, opening the circle just long enough to let Hikari in. He stepped over the boundary without hesitation.

Bakura wasn't sure what he really expected. Last time, there'd been no flashing lights or signs that anything was actually happening. But this time he had changed a significant amount of the sigils and preparations, and there was no accounting for the changes until he tried.

But there was no need to worry. It worked, actually worked, just as he had expected. He could feel the sap of shadows all the way down to his bones, but it was a manageable drain. He didn't even feel short of breath.

"You've gotten stronger," Hikari commented.

And Hikari was indeed correct, Bakura noticed. He almost missed the way that the spell to disguise his eyes was something so simple, so easy to maintain that he scarcely noticed it anymore. But the flexing of shadows was becoming drastically easier the more that he pushed himself.

"Naraki was good for something after all. Now, let's try the other," he said.

The process for setup was the same. This time, however, well…

It blew up in his face. Literally. Hikari hadn't even had time to get inside of it before the whole thing consumed itself in a burst of fire. Bakura had laughed, but Hikari was freaking out.

"They're just eyebrows," Bakura laughed. "They'll grow back! Haha, that was great!"

"Failure isn't a laughing matter!" Hikari worried.

"Lesson learned, don't take too many shortcuts," Bakura said, but Hikari shook his head savagely.

"Magic isn't like everything else. Failure isn't a lesson learned. It's a chance of death. You can't mess around with this stuff!"

Bakura smirked. "Glad to see you back to your old self."

Hikari huffed, but glowed a little brighter in spite of himself. "Well, we know what works. How long do you think you can sustain it?"

"Not sure," Bakura said. "Kinda wanted to test it out on Sunday when there's no pressure to be anywhere. You free then?" he asked with a wink.

"Well, I'll have to clear out my very busy schedule," Hikari said with a giggle.

"I'll have to figure out how to make it more portable of course… Hmm…" He couldn't very well carry around a giant posterboard marked up with arcane nonsense. Oh don't mind me, just taking my invisible friend out for a walk. He can't leave the circle though…

No, it wouldn't go over well. He eyed Hikari. "How small of a container can you fit into?"

* * *

In class, as he sat in his desk, he played with a few designs that seemed possible.

One of them, the most likely of the collection, involved a glued down salt ring and marks on the bottom of a bottle. It would be tricky getting the marks small enough, but Bakura wanted to give it a shot.

His first model of the design involved drawing directly onto the bottle, but as he worked more into the intricacies of the project, he realized this wouldn't work out so well. The ridged bottoms of the bottles would make marking them up almost impossible at that scale.

His next idea involved glueing a marked up piece of paper to the bottom of the bottle. But this would be too permanent. Bakura needed something he could attach and remove easily as necessary. Something adhesive but replaceable. Sticky tack or chewed gum would work nicely. Pliable, moldable, and in the case of sticky tack, reusable.

There was that problem neatly solved. Maybe in the coming days, he could see if it was possible to print the circles off a computer if he drew them with a vector art program and save time on drawing them over again and again.

The fourth iteration of the plan needed to address the salt issue. There was no way to get Hikari inside if the salt was glued in place. Toying with this idea took up most of the afternoon, but before class let out, he thought he might have settled it with a little circular pouch he could fit around the bottle. Pinch the salt out of the way so Hikari could slip inside, and then let it settle into place.

He drummed his pencil against the desk, reveling in his minor victory, when he felt a tap on the shoulder. He casually tugged a worksheet over the top of his sketches. There weren't but a smattering of small runes dotting the page, but it was better not to let Yugi see anything.

"Motou," he said. "The fuck do you want?"

"Well if you're going to be like that, nevermind then," Yugi said.

Bakura's eye twitched. He wasn't going to be baited into Yugi's stupid game.

He waited, counting down silently from five. He barely reached 2 before the tapping returned.

"Okay, fine," Yugi said. "Do you like games?"

"Nope," Bakura lied.

"Oh come on, everyone loves games. I know you're lying to me," Yugi said. "Come on, admit it."

"Yes, I enjoy them. What of it?" Bakura growled. He turned a bit in the desk, unsurprised to see Yugi grinning widely.

"My grandpa is hosting a big gaming tournament at his shop on Sunday afternoon. It's going to be great! And if you aren't doing anything-"

"I'll be busy," Bakura said without waiting for him to finish. Sunday was when he'd be 'shopping' with Hikari and running diagnostic tests on the new designs for the arcane circle. "Tempting as it is," he snorted sarcastically.

Yugi's smile wavered. "Well, if you feel like dropping by, we'll have board games, card games, even Duel Monsters and Monster World tables. Whenever is fine, but I would really appreciate you showing up. There's going to be a great turnout this year."

The smile was back, with all the childish glee that it entailed. His eyes were purple, but Bakura was still distrustful. He turned back in his seat.

There would be no winning this discussion, Bakura could already tell. Even with no intentions of ever setting foot anywhere near that damn shadowwatcher's territory, he still said, "I'll consider it, alright?"

"That's all I ask," Yugi said. He smiled and sat back. Bakura ground his teeth.

* * *

Hikari was astounded by the final design, and that was putting things mildly, if you asked Bakura. He was nearly incoherent with shock, babbling and glowing so blindingly bright that Bakura gave up and put on sunglasses.

At least the little wisp was happy, right? He mocked up an initial model of the design, adjusting the manner in which the circle was fastened to the bottle, then adjusting the size of the salt ring. All things that needed to be done with a physical model of the design, rather than a few lines on a piece of paper.

The final result was a shoddy looking piece of garbage that might just work. The redesigning took the better part of two days, so no testing was done until Saturday night. Crunch time.

Things went about as well as expected. There was a slightly more noticeable drain than with the full size poster board version, but that was probably attributed to the scale. At long last, the final test was ready.

He pulled his old backpack on, tucked the bottle into a side pocket so Hikari could watch out the side, and cracked his knuckles with a delirious grin. He hadn't been this excited for something in years.

Bakura had thought long and hard about where to take Hikari, and figured that he should start smaller. There'd be plenty of time to see more exciting places later, and there was no need to overwhelm the thing.

Domino had its own shopping district along the edges of the city proper, smaller than some of the main districts in Japan to be sure, but still respectable enough. The train ride was reasonable, and the weather was nice. It was sure to be busy.

He waved to his aunt as he passed. "Not sure how long I'll be gone. Don't wait up," he called.

"Don't be too late," she called back, but it was a half-hearted effort. She didn't even look up from the fashion magazine her nose was buried in.

Bakura laughed to himself.

"She isn't very attentive," Hikari commented as they stepped through the front door.

Bakura shrugged. "No, but it works to my advantage. Come on, you want to see the train don't you?"

"Yes yes yes!" Hikari said.

Bakura grinned. "Good. Let's head out. First off, neighborhood." He swept out his hands, presenting Hikari with the view of streets lined with houses, all of them penned in by small gates labeled with the names of the residents.

"Wow," Hikari breathed. "This is amazing! What is this that you're walking on? I've seen it from the window, but I can never get close enough."

Bakura puzzled it over for a second. "Wait… do you mean the asphalt?"

"Asphalt… So strange!" Hikari said.

Hikari was marveling at asphalt. Just how long has he been sealed away up in that attic? The house wasn't that old… Bakura cast a measured glance back the way they'd come. No, the house was a bit on the older side, but certainly not as old as Hikari seemed to be.

So what then? More puzzles to figure out. If he could only find the answers, maybe Hikari would be free. And then what mischief Bakura could get into… He grinned to himself.

* * *

"So this is a train?" Hikari asked. "It's so big! And there's so many people! You never told me there were this many people," he marveled.

"You never asked," Bakura replied. Someone looked at him funny, so he glared in their direction until they looked away. The stranger busied himself looking out the window.

They must have thought he was crazy, talking to himself. He'd have to work on that next. One problem at a time though.

"What do you think?" he asked, a touch quieter. He tried to keep from moving his lips too much, and it seemed to work a bit better than it had previously.

"It's so shiny!" Hikari said. "How fast are we going? I can't see anything out the windows, it's just a blur."

"Not sure," Bakura muttered. He trailed his eyes over the others on the train. Some of them seemed to be students like him, enjoying the day off classes. Of course, none of them were planning quite the same thing he was for the day.

Nor, of course, did they feel a strange pull on their very being, trying to drag them back to the place they had left.

The shadows seemed to chill him to his bones and call him back. In fact, Bakura felt curiously hyper-aware of exactly where the house was in relation to him, and if he bothered to think about it too much, he probably could have figured out just how fast they were going.

Strange.

He twisted to look at the discarded bottle which held Hikari. The salt ring was still taped near the bottom, the sigil still affixed to the base, and Hikari was jammed inside of the clear plastic. The bottle hadn't budged an inch from the black mesh side pocket it was shoved into. Bakura tapped a fingernail on the bottle. "Sitting comfy in there?"

"Very much so, yes," Hikari replied. "I barely feel the house right now." Bakura nodded.

He was feeling it increasingly the further away they got. Probably a tradeoff. But it was manageable enough, thanks to all of the exercise Bakura had been getting from Naraki's training sessions.

The train began to slow. "See any cops?" Bakura muttered. His eyes traced over the packed train. No uniforms, as far as he could tell.

"No one looks the way you described, as far as I can tell. Why, do you need to speak with one?" Hikari asked. The train began to stop as they neared their destination. Bakura grinned.

"Not in the slightest. If you see one, just let me know."

People began to crowd closer to the doors. Bakura casually leaned in close to a woman with her hair pulled into a tight chignon bun. In the two seconds of brief contact, his hand feathered into her handbag, fishing out a wallet. He retreated back as quickly as he'd begun, the woman none the wiser.

A jacket in his hands hid his new prize, and he surreptitiously stowed the wallet into an internal pocket in the jacket. The doors opened, and they surged out of the train in a wave. The woman combed a strand of hair from her face and walked out, blithely unaware.

Bakura grinned. He still had it. And Hikari hadn't even noticed.

They left the train station, stepping out into the light of the cool but lovely September day. Bakura ducked into a fast food restaurant and made for the bathroom. "What are we doing here?" Hikari asked. "What is this place? A bathroom? It's so dirty and cramped."

Bakura locked himself inside of a stall. "Just taking a quick pit stop," Bakura said, opening it up.

A few credit cards, a small sum of cash. He pocketed the cash without hesitating, then flicked through the credit cards. Chips in all of them. He folded them up. She'd realize soon enough, so he needed to work quick.

"What are you doing?" Hikari asked. He squirmed inside of the bottle, but his position on Bakura's backpack made it difficult for him to see Bakura's hands. Bakura replaced the wallet.

"Just the same old, same old," Bakura said. He stepped out of the bathroom. A camera in the corner caught his eye, and he paused, grinning. This was something new to try. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and muttered a few dark words under his breath.

"Blindness?" Hikari asked. "What are you blinding?"

"That camera over there," Bakura said. The red light still glowed, but Bakura could see a thin veneer of darkness creep over the lens. He would be invisible now. Suddenly this magic thing was looking even better than before.

He made his way up to the fast food counter. "I'll take a…" He eyed the menu. He hadn't been to one of these places in a while. "Number four? Yeah, number four. No pickles. And a number six with fries. And the biggest drink you've got."

He grabbed the first of several cards and used it to pay for the meal.

"Forget my face," he added, flicking his fingers towards the checkout girl's eyes. Her face slackened for a brief moment, and then sharpened again. He walked away and waited for his food.

"Why did you want her to forget you?" Hikari asked.

"It makes my life easier," Bakura replied. He slid into a quiet booth in the corner and pulled the bottle out of the backpack pocket, placing both on the table. "So, any questions?"

"Yes, where are we now? A place for acquiring food?" Hikari asked, turning this way and that within his bottle. He studied the way that the people around them ate.

"You don't know what a restaurant is?" Bakura asked.

Hikari shook his head within the bottle. "Not until now. But wow, that looks extremely convenient. And… you don't even have to prepare it yourself? They just bring it to you? Why don't you and your family always go to a restaurant to eat?"

Bakura smiled patiently. It was like a small child, but not in an annoying way like real kids. Bakura didn't like kids. This was more like… hmm… like a tourist seeing a new world for the first time. Yes, that would be how he would describe Hikari.

The food came around. Someone left the tray on his table and Bakura began to unwrap the first burger eagerly. Through a mouthful of food, he said, "Well, it can get expensive to do it all the time, and my aunt and uncle aren't exactly wealthy."

He slurped at his drink to clear his throat.

"And actually, this isn't even a very nice place to go, really. The food's pretty cheap and greasy, but damn it's delicious."

Hikari hummed. "I wish I could try it." He curled this way and that inside of the bottle, eventually turning to face out the window at the streams of people going by. Bakura studied him, but didn't stop picking at his food.

"Me too," Bakura said. "Kinda sucks that you're stuck inside that bottle."

Hikari's brightness flickered softly. "Well, it isn't so bad. This is still so much better than I ever expected. And hey, we get to see this place at long last."

He glittered wistfully.

"I didn't think I'd ever get to leave that house, and now I'm here. I really like it. So many people. So many new faces. I want to say hello to them all. But… none of them can see or hear me."

He sounded so sad. Bakura's french fries turned to tasteless paste in his mouth. He scowled darkly into his food. Damn that little wisp, making him feel guilty!

Bakura had a long history of not giving a damn about other people. He'd stabbed enough people in the back to lose any trace of trust from anyone else. So how did that little soul manage to make Bakura actually feel bad?

So what if that little soul was trapped inside of Bakura's attic? And that he didn't know what asphalt and restaurants were, or what trains and schools looked like. Bakura didn't care about that. Did he?

He stuffed the last of the burger into his mouth and quickly at the other sandwich. There was only so much time left, and he could feel the strain of magic pulling on him the longer he sat here. As soon as he finished, he tossed the trash and grabbed the bottle and his bag.

Instead of tucking it in the mesh pocket, he carried it in his hands. "Come on, Hikari. Let's see the rest of this place."

They went first to a store that sold gift cards, and Bakura purchased a few with a variety of the credit cards. He was careful to keep the totals low. Too high, and he'd be forced to sign for them, and he didn't want that. After the stack of gift cards were purchased, the cameras disabled in each location, he bought a pair of scissors.

Hikari was confused by all of these strange purchases. "How does all of this work? You show a box a card and the cashier lets you take another card? What purpose does it serve?"

"Just don't mention it to anyone and you'll never need to know," Bakura replied easily. He ducked into another bathroom and went to work on the cards and wallet.

Any minute now, surely, they'd be disabled. He'd gotten what he wanted from them anyway. He cut everything into tiny shreds and then sprinkled a few pieces into each of a dozen different trash cans along the way.

Hikari puzzled over this for a while, but Bakura's vague responses didn't answer many of his questions. When he saw Bakura's shiteating grin, he huffed, finally figuring it all out. "Oooh, you told me you wouldn't do illegal things!"

"This isn't that bad," Bakura replied. "No one's getting hurt, and I only took, like, 10,000 yen. And really, credit card fraud is like, minimal. Keep the totals low, be a minor like I am, and the worst you'll get is a fine. Generally speaking," Bakura added with a cough.

Hikari flashed irritably. "It's stealing with a weird name, and worse, you're using your magic to help you!"

Bakura rolled his eyes. "I can do it without magic. In fact, next time, I just might. It's too easy now that I have the shadows. It's like cheat codes. Fun for a few minutes and then all the thrill is gone and you're just bored."

Hikari made a little irritated noise. "You do it for the challenge?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Bakura said. "I've got a cushy life now. Haven't needed to steal in a while. So now I can do it for fun."

Hikari looked disgusted. "That's wrong, Bakura. These people worked hard for what they have, and you just take it from them. That's unacceptable."

"What's unacceptable is that people can watch a child starving on the streets, beaten black and blue, and not feel the slightest hint of guilt. No desire to throw even a cent their way. Because they 'worked hard' for that money. People are always greedy, Hikari. They show it in different ways, and for different things, but what I'm doing is not as wrong as you like to think."

Bakura narrowed his eyes.

"There comes a time in your life where things get so bad, so desperate, that your choices are to steal or die. And when that choice comes, you learn to take everything you can get your hands on, because the alternative is a shallow grave under a bridge. I won't be like that, Hikari. I refuse."

Hikari fell silent. Bakura was panting softly, stirred into a slight frenzy. Hikari's glow fluttered hesitantly.

"I still don't like it," Hikari said. "You might have lived a life that I can't even begin to understand, but that doesn't mean that things like this are acceptable here, now. If you got in trouble, if you were arrested…"

"I won't, I'm better than that," Bakura said.

Hikari lashed inside the bottle, brightening to blinding levels once more. "But you're not perfect! It's still possible. And Bakura, you're my first friend in forever. I couldn't bear to lose you. And not just because I'd start forgetting again, either. Bakura…"

He flickered and softened and began to pale.

"Bakura, please don't do this."

"I…" Bakura trailed off. Even without a face, Hikari stared up at him with what seemed like widened, innocent eyes. "Hikari, this is who I am. It's a part of me. It would be like telling a bird not to fly. It's all I've ever known."

"You can learn something new," Hikari pleaded. "You're learning magic. Use it to help people!"

Bakura turned away. "We can talk about this later. Let's keep shopping, alright?"

Hikari dimmed, looking disappointed.

"Hey, and if anything catches your eye, let me know. Let's… not ruin this trip out like this."

Hikari hummed gently in agreement. They walked along, and for a while, Hikari took in the sights mostly silently. Sometimes he would ooh or ahh, or ask what something was, but he didn't seem as inclined to look closer at things.

At least, not until they passed a brightly colored shop with large music notes decorating the storefront.

"What is that?" Hikari asked. "At your three o'clock," he added. Bakura looked to the right.

"Music store," Bakura said. "They've got all different kinds. Want to see?"

Hikari made eager affirmative noises. "Yes yes!"

"Alright." Bakura stepped inside.

He hadn't been in a music shop in ages. Honestly, he had thought that digital music had killed all the stores. But it seemed that this place was still clinging to life, probably through sales of vinyls and expensive headphone sets.

Headphones lined one of the walls, allowing customers to sample some of the music. Bakura moved a pair of headphones and set the bottle on the counter between the earpieces. He turned the music on and grabbed a pair for himself.

Hikari's light brightened and pulsed in time with the music. "This… This is music?" he gasped. His voice was louder than normal. "I've never heard anything like this!" He wriggled within the bottle. Bakura winced.

The shadows lanced through him, tugging painfully at his chest. The drawing sensation was beginning to grow painful. Hikari jostled within the plastic bottle.

"I can't just hear it, I can feel it too!" Hikari marveled.

"Like that?" Bakura asked. Hikari bounced around. Bakura checked the title of the track and grabbed the disc from the shelf. He looked left and then right. No one was watching. The only camera pointed at the door.

Bakura slid the disc into his jacket pocket with a dull smile.

A good enough end to the day. Not particularly busy, but eventful enough to get back into the swing of things. He grabbed the bottle from the counter and replaced it in the backpack.

"Are we leaving so soon?" Hikari asked, crestfallen.

"Can't you feel the draw?" Bakura asked. He kneaded his chest. The tightness came and went. The strain was growing more difficult to bear. Soon it would snap, and Bakura had a bad feeling there'd be some nasty recoil.

Hikari sighed. "I do. It's fine. Can… can we…?" he trailed off nervously.

"What?" Bakura asked, stepping back out into the sunlight. He angled himself toward the train station.

"Could we do this again sometime?" Hikari asked.

A little smile cracked across Bakura's face. "Yeah, that'd be fun."

Bakura keep his hands to himself on the train. He still had the gift cards and the cash, and it was more than he'd owned since getting here. How had he lasted this long?

This place was making him soft. But… He looked at the softly glowing bottle. Hikari was buzzing within, humming and flickering with ethereal light. Well, he'd just been a bit distracted is all.

* * *

 **Sorry for posting this twice! My bad, guys. Messed up a bit, but it's all good now.**


	9. Chapter 9

It happened quickly. The tail end of the train ride grew rapidly more and more agonizing by the second. By the time he left the station, he was short of breath.

"Bakura, it's hurting you," Hikari said, alarmed. Bakura's hands were darkening slowly, creeping over with shadows. The strain made his eyes water.

"I'm fine," Bakura ground out. He held up his head and squared his shoulders. He passed the glass of a darkly tinted window. His reflection showed red, slit-pupil eyes.

Bakura walked faster. He lowered his head a bit, keeping his gaze fixed on the ground. He hadn't even noticed the severance of magic to his eyes. The worst part was that, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't bring it back.

It was like the pool of magic was running dry. He gasped and clutched at his chest as the pain ripped through him. He took off a bit faster. The house wasn't so far away. Only ten minutes. He could definitely make it that far.

"Bakura, the sigils," Hikari warned. Bakura couldn't afford to spare the glance, but it didn't stop him from seeing the edges of the paper beginning to decay. Shadows whispered along the edges.

"We're so close," Bakura panted. "We can make it." He winced. The mark felt like fire on his chest. Except when he brushed his fingers against it, the sign of the shadows was colder than salted ice. It burned the tips of his fingers. "Ah, shit."

"Let me go," Hikari said. "I'll be fine, just let me go!"

"We can make it," Bakura replied. "I'm stronger than I look." His hands ached. A migraine began to pound behind his temples. Every glancing beam of light, reflected off windows and metal and other such things, seemed blindingly, painfully bright. "I can make it. I can make it."

He wasn't talking to Hikari anymore.

"Bakura, it'll be fine. You're hurting yourself."

"House, right, there," Bakura panted. The neighborhood crept by at a snail's pace. Every step proved harder than the last. "Not weak."

"I never said you were!" Hikari was spinning rapidly now, trying to free himself. "Bakura, Bakura!"

He tuned out the little soul. The porch was right there. It awaited, so close, like a desert oasis under the heat of a miserably dry sun. He could almost see the property's border like a shimmery black line.

"So close…" His feet slipped from under him and he hit the ground hard. He held the bottle in his fingers. The sigils were almost decayed. They were barely legible. Any second, the magical bindings would snap.

He crawled back up to his feet. 10 feet, six, four, one…

He gasped as he passed over the line, crashing hard onto the grass. The mark hurt so badly he wanted to scream. He bit his tongue.

The paper crumbled to dust and Bakura yanked the salt ring from the bottle. Hikari popped free from the top like a cork. A soft, silvery glow suffused over his skin. The recoiling snap struck him in the chest like a suckerpunch, and it was over. The endless drawing out of the darkness was severed.

"Bakura, your skin, it's all burnt," Hikari cried. The thicker-than-air tendrils fluttered softly over his skin, cold as snowfall. Bakura couldn't bring himself to move. He couldn't bear to open his eyes.

"Ugh," he managed. His tongue was thick and useless in his mouth, and it tasted metallic. Late afternoon sunlight stabbed painfully at his corneas. He lifted a hand. His flesh was smoking and charred, but returning to its original deathly pallor as he watched. "Gah. Shit."

He went limp in the grass.

"Eloquent," Hikari said. "You made it. Happy? That's a great way to kill yourself you idiot! What if the house was ten feet further? What if the train had been delayed? You should have let me go!"

Bakura started to laugh. He couldn't help it. It was deep and cold and humorless but damn if he couldn't stop. He had made it.

He'd pushed himself to the edge. This was where the line was drawn. And he'd made it, just like he'd said he would. "Hikari, I did it. I freaking did it."

Hikari still seemed upset and highly put out. "Congrats," he said stiffly, but the cold glow of his light seemed to soften even as he hovered above Bakura's head. Bakura grinned and forced himself up. It hurt so badly he had to pause.

Ugh. His mind slipped back to a time maybe four years ago, when an older kid on the street beat the shit out of him. Bakura had managed to find a great little score, enough food to last him the next week easy.

But this kid wanted it. To this day, Bakura didn't know his name. Not that it mattered. The kid took it all. Bakura fought back like any self respecting street rat. But he'd left his only knife in the hiding spot in case he got caught by police, so when the kid threw him to the ground, Bakura had nothing.

There are vivid memories that stand out beyond all passage of time.

A fist coming toward your face. A foot pounding endlessly, again and again into your sides as you cry out in pain and fury. The feeling when your body refuses to do what you want it to do, when you just want to stand up and destroy the life of some punk ass little twerp, but all you can muster is enough spit to piss him off and to dirty his fucking face.

This was what it felt like now. Not the fresh pain, but the humiliating ache that had lasted for weeks after. There had been no hospital trips for him. There wasn't anyone left.

When Bakura could finally walk without wincing, he was already on the move. Knife in hand, he found that kid. Made him pay. No one messed with him again after that, and Bakura never went anywhere again without a knife.

It was the same now. He'd shown the shadows what he could do. He knew what he could accomplish. And if he kept pushing himself, who knew where he'd end up? Bakura grinned.

After a few shuddering breaths, sitting up wasn't as painful as laughing had been.

"Next time, let's be a bit more careful, shall we?" Bakura said with a cough. Hikari didn't laugh. "Come on, let's head on inside."

Aunt Aiko wasn't in the living room anymore. The clock on the wall showed that it was nearly four o'clock, so they had been out and about for around five hours. Bakura didn't care where the woman was, as long as she wasn't pestering him about what he looked like.

His backpack felt infinitely heavier than when he dragged it downstairs this morning. Climbing the stairs left him short of breath once again. Hikari was darting around his head, concerned.

"Bakura, are you going to be okay? Do you need help?" he asked.

"I made it this far," he muttered. He left the backpack in the doorway of his bedroom and shuffled off toward the bathroom. He looked like hell warmed over.

His hair was an absolute mess with pieces of grass sticking out. His eyes were brilliant and red and entirely conspicuous. He looked even paler than before, a bit sickly and still a little crispy around the edges. And to make matters worse, the mark on his chest was _glowing_. Not just swirling over with darkness as it tended to do usually, but full on glowing through his shirt.

He twisted this way and that, eying the faint crimson glow peeking through the fabric. "You see this, right?" he asked.

Hikari nodded. "Yes. If you're worried about it, I don't think anyone who isn't shadowtouched can see it. However, if Yugi saw you…"

Bakura grimaced. "Lucky he's probably busy with that stupid game thing he's putting on."

"Game thing?" Hikari asked.

Bakura shrugged, pulling down the collar of his shirt to study the mark. It was still icy cold to the touch, but it didn't burn him on contact like the last time. "Yeah, Mouto made a big deal about how he wanted me to see his stupid game shop for some tournament."

"Are you going?" Hikari asked warily. He hovered near the mark, inches away from the skin. Bakura let the shirt slide back into place.

"Wasn't planning on it. Certainly won't go if I look like this. No sense painting a target on my back for no reason. Plus, it seemed really suspicious in my opinion. Might be a trap, and I don't feel like making any more poor life choices today."

Hikari gave him a dirty look. "Don't pretend you're sorry you did it, you smug idiot."

Bakura grinned unrepentantly. "And another thing, I don't have time for games. I go there, and I'll want to play them. I start to play them, I lose track of time. I lose track of time, and then when am I gonna figure you out?"

Hikari fluttered appreciatively. "Well, I mean…" he said, looking elsewhere. "Still, what if you can use it to find out something about him? I agree, there's no reason to take unnecessary risks, but…"

"I'm not going. Plus, just imagine how pissed he'll be when I don't show up," Bakura added gleefully. "It'll be hilarious."

"You're so mean, Bakura," Hikari said. "And you still look terrible. If you were smart, you'd take a shower and do a cleansing ritual as soon as possible, before your aunt sees you."

Bakura considered it for all of a half second before sighing. "Yeah, you're probably right." He stripped the shirt off and grabbed a towel from the closet. "I must reek of shadow magic right now."

Hikari nodded grimly. "It's… certainly potent, yes."

Bakura cracked his neck. It gave with a series of sharp pops. "Damn, I hope Naraki doesn't push me too hard tonight."

* * *

"Another hour, I think," Naraki said, leaving the kitchen area.

"Fuuuck," Bakura groaned.

The smell of the brewing potion was noxious. It was hard enough holding the dumbbells aloft with just the shadows. It was doubly hard when he was exhausted still from earlier, and having to breath in carcinogenic fumes from Naraki's attempts at making whatever it was he was making in there.

"I don't know why you're struggling with this so much," Naraki said. "You haven't been working outside of class, have you?"

Bakura grinned. "What, me? You know I don't do homework."

Naraki let out a shallow bark of laughter. "True enough. Just keep that up." He turned his back to Bakura, thumbing through the pages of an old yellowed tome.

Bakura's attention pricked. "What was that?" he asked suddenly.

Naraki sneered. "Don't think you can distract me, boy. I don't care how hard it is. This is a great way to make you stronger."

Bakura heard it again: a distant rattling noise somewhere below them. The knocking grew louder. Suddenly, the air was pierced by a large crashing sound. Naraki swore colorfully and sprinted for the basement door, the one Bakura wasn't allowed to touch.

"Don't move," Naraki ordered.

The door opened at Naraki's gesture and Bakura's teacher vanished into the gloom of the downstairs area. Bakura glared at the dumbbells that hovered in the air. He would have killed to know what that sound was. He contemplated dropping them, but in seconds, Naraki returned.

His normally professional-looking professor was ruffled and suddenly haggard, sweating and panting. "Ah, yes, ahaha, all taken care of," he said, looking rather flustered. "Little piece of…" He trailed off into vague mutterings.

Bakura watched as Naraki sealed the door back up with a prolonged gesture and a snap of his fingers.

"What was that?" Bakura asked.

"Just an experiment," Naraki said dismissively. He wasn't looking at Bakura, but had instead turned his attentions back to the weathered book. "Ahem. Anyway."

He consulted a pocket watch he had tucked away. A spasm of irritation flickered over his face.

"Damn stubborn little…"

"Something wrong?" Bakura asked innocently. Naraki had seemed on edge for most of the night, but it wasn't until just now that he seemed remotely inclined to share with the class. He was pissed, and it was showing.

Naraki scowled. "Go ahead, put that down." Bakura let the dumbbell hit the floor without hesitation. "There's been someone wandering the edges of my territory for a while. Last thing I need really, with my experiments where they are at the moment, but…"

"Do you mean Yugi?" Bakura asked. He sent a contemptuous look at the weights and wrinkled his nose. It smelled like decay and fresh cut grass in the room, and the mixture was altogether unpleasant.

Naraki didn't look up from the book. "No, someone else. Not sure yet who. They know they're in someone's territory, us Shadowmages have ways of showing our presence that the watchers don't know about. Ten to one they're sizing me up, seeing if this place is worth challenging me for it."

"What do they want it for?" Bakura asked.

"Safe place to work, private, away from watchers and other mages. Lots of people around to blend in with. Big cities are easier to blend into than small towns, as you might imagine."

Bakura nodded. It was as though there was something else that Naraki hadn't mentioned yet, and didn't seem inclined to share. But Bakura couldn't tell what it was, so he hummed.

"Right, so what do you do about it?"

Naraki finally looked up, a malicious grin on his face. "We scare them away, of course. Show them it isn't worth the trouble."

"Protect your territory," Bakura clarified, and Naraki laughed coldly.

"Care to watch?"

But Naraki didn't even need to ask. They both already knew the answer to that question.

They slipped into the lengthening shadows of the evening. Sunset drew closer, and the city was stained orange. Bakura followed the winding fractures in the pavement.

Naraki moved with purpose.

"Where are we headed?" Bakura asked. The houses fell away behind them, shifting into the city proper. They boarded a train and still Naraki was silent.

His teacher checked the small pocket watch again. It seemed a bit out of place in his possession, until Bakura realized the truth. Instead of a normal timepiece, its face showed a mishmash of glowing symbols and swirling darkness. A few of the runes looked vaguely familiar, but Naraki snapped the timepiece shut before Bakura could identify any.

"We're going to one of the markers. There's one near the school. That's where we're headed to now. Any luck and we'll catch them while they're still loitering around."

Bakura narrowed his eyes. Naraki seemed more overconfident than usual. Questions still burned in the back of his mind.

"What's the difference between them and me?" Bakura asked. "Why didn't you just kick me out?"

Naraki gave him a bored look. "Now you ask this? It's common sense, kid. Power level, attitude, and ignorance. You're not gonna fight me. Hell, you still couldn't fight your way out of a paper bag."

Bakura glared, then swallowed it back. Naraki was lying. There was something else to it, he could tell, but Naraki wasn't inclined to share yet.

He wasn't going to call Naraki out on it yet, though. There was still so much he didn't know. Much better to grin, he quickly decided. "Look at that. Charmed my way into magic school. Won't mummy be proud."

Naraki smirked. "There you go." He didn't even seem to notice his slip.

The train rocked slightly, like a ship on gentle waves. It was almost empty at this hour, and the sleepy passengers around them seemed out of it.

Naraki noticed Bakura's gaze and laughed quietly. "Look at them. Humanity. Reduced to this from just a small dose of shadows."

"You're doing this?" Bakura said, shocked. Naraki laughed.

"I'll show you how to do it next week, how about that?" Naraki said. He was grinning.

Bakura nodded. "Sounds good."

They departed from the train soon after. People blinked as they left, raising their heads and rubbing at their eyes like they were waking from a dream.

The school was only a short, brisk walk away.

"It took years to figure these sensors out," Naraki said as they finished the last leg of the journey. "They aren't the most effective or sensitive things in the world, and they only pick up humans, but they're better than a kick in the ass."

Beside the old oak tree in front of the gate, a lone figure stood, twirling a ragged string of darkness through her fingers. It grew lighter and brighter the closer they got.

It was a trace of the shadows, except instead of black, the fluttering ribbons were a poisonous shade of violet. In the light of a nearby street lamp, Bakura could just barely make out that this color was the same as the woman's eyes.

The lamplight flickered threateningly.

"So you're the one who left these here," she said. She flicked the flag-like ribbons away, and they vanished from sight.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't pull up my marks," Naraki said easily. He flashed a smile at the blonde-haired woman, but there was no warmth in the expression. It was cold like ice.

"You mean these?" the woman asked, opening her hands. More of the ribbons spilled to the ground and vanished on contact with the pavement.

Naraki ground his teeth. "Watch closely, Kurokawa-kun." Darkness flared in his hands, shooting up like black flames through his fingers. "This is a valuable learning lesson."

"Oh look, you've got yourself a pet," the woman said, looking at Bakura for the first time.

Bakura eyed her back. She certainly cut an impressive figure, tall and thin and rather busty at that. It didn't hurt that she was also attractive.

"Hey, kid, want to learn how to use real power? Drop that poser and join me. I've always wanted a little pet." She sounded overconfident and just slightly amused. "The name's Mai by the way. Mai Valentine."

"Nah," Bakura replied. "Got it pretty comfortable here."

Naraki grinned. "See? My territory, my apprentice. And you're not welcome here."

"For now, maybe. But I think things may change by morning." She narrowed her eyes and flicked her fingers through the air, tracing out a sigil.

The lines hung heavily in the air, black and flickering through with more of the violet. A flash of light tore the character apart, and it was quickly washed over with a wave of darkness that seemed to unzip into a roughly oblong structure as Bakura watched.

Claws reached out from inside the darkness, grasping the jagged edges of the black oval between them. Mai began to smirk. A head slowly emerged through the doorway.

The doorway was small, maybe only two feet tall and one foot wide, but the thing that crawled out seemed much larger. First a woman's head, then a body crested in feathers.

The colors rippled like the darkness and then grew vibrant and bright. It stood upright on the ground, fierce and proud, easily as tall as Mai.

It raised its clawed hands in the air. Wings connected to each over-long arm. It looked like a beautiful woman, but when it opened its mouth, it let out a horrible screech. Shivers rocketed down Bakura's spine in spite of himself.

But Naraki only laughed. The fire in his palms grew larger, crackling and snapping outward.

"Aren't you going to summon a fighter?" Mai asked innocently. He shook his head, grinning. She smirked, cold and cruel. "Good. Just don't feel bad when my harpy tears you to shreds!"

She looked at Bakura one last time.

"You've still got a chance to join me, kid." Bakura hesitated, but crossed his arms and shook his head. No, Naraki was pretty confident in himself. Surely he wouldn't lose…

Could Bakura get away if he did? Naraki insisted that Bakura would be torn to shreds by another of their own kind. His teacher might not know the extent of Bakura's true power, but even still.

Bakura wasn't given much choice. In the blink of an eye, Mai raised her arm and pointed to Naraki. "Attack, Harpy Lady!"

The harpy screeched so loudly that Bakura covered his ears. But Naraki roared back. A twitch of his hands cloaked him in massive tongues of that churning black fire. The sight of it stung Bakura's memory, creeping down his spine.

Bakura shivered in spite of the warm night. His body was struck immobile by the sight, everything happening as if in slow motion. Black fire. He'd seen something like it before. Bile rose on his tongue.

The fire, burning, screaming, deafening in his ears. So much agony. Someone yelling his name. Blood painting the walls of a ramshackle house. Brimstone stench like hell itself.

Bakura shook himself. No! He was in Domino, he was alive! He blinked the phantasmagoria away.

Naraki bull rushed toward the harpy, dodging past her swiping claws. He grabbed her by the neck, capturing her in the fire and then burning her with a flare of the darkness. The harpy screamed. Flames reached ten, twenty feet high before receding as quickly as it started. The harpy's body hit the ground with a dull crunch.

Mai gasped, clutching at her chest. Naraki strode forward. He was still on fire, the tips of his hair crackling, his footsteps deafening in the sudden silence left by the cutoff of harpy screams.

He stared dispassionately down at her. "I'd appreciate it if you left my markers alone," he said.

"Have mercy," she gasped. Blood dribbled past her lips, staining her teeth and chin red. "Please, I'll leave-"

"And then return later when I'm not expecting it, I know the drill," Naraki said. He placed a hand on her head. "So here's a warning. Don't come back." A shrill scream split the night. Fire roared through her.

She slumped to the ground and did not stir. Her eyes were open but lifeless. The fire finally flickered out. Bakura took a few measured steps closer.

"Is she dead?"

"No," Naraki said. "But she'll be like that for a while."

He looked back at where the harpy had fallen. In the span of seconds, the creature had begun to decompose, feathers decaying into crumbling ash. The wind carried it away like dust.

"Most shadowmages use avatars to fight for them. Usually demons, or the like. Sometimes they're just entities of the shadows. Most of them don't like to dirty their own hands."

"You're teaching now?" Bakura said.

Naraki wore a grin as he kicked the pile of dust. "No better time than now." He stooped down beside Mai, placing his fingers on her throat. After a moment, he nodded, grabbed her by the back of the jacket, and dragged her to the bushes. "Might be a problem if she's still laying here when class starts tomorrow."

He wasn't wrong. Bakura helped him arrange the branches back into place. Naraki stood up with a groan.

"I'm getting too old for this," he grumbled. "Still. Most shadowmages use avatars, so they don't really expect to face someone who doesn't. Knowing how to do both is a valuable asset indeed. Taking them head on may just surprise one of them enough to give you the edge you need."

Bakura nodded. "Sure, but are you going to teach me either of those things?"

Naraki gave him a cheeky look. "You can't even hold those weights up. Get stronger, and then we'll talk." Bakura scoffed under his breath. Naraki checked his watch. "It's getting late. Head on home, Kurokawa-kun. I'll walk with you to the train."

* * *

"Still, it's interesting to see how shadowmages self-govern like that," Bakura said.

Hikari hovered closer. His featherlight touch was cool on Bakura's shoulder. "Naraki just left her there? Will she be alright?"

"She attacked him," Bakura said. He reclined back on his bed. He'd already retrieved one of the old books from the cabinet in the attic, and he thumbed it open to a random page. "She got what was coming to her. But Naraki said she'd live, so she should be okay. Wonder what he did to her…" Bakura mused.

"You said Naraki tried to teach you while you were there. Didn't he show you how to do these things?" Hikari asked. "Not that I approve, but… defending yourself is important too." His tendrils curled faintly.

Bakura scoffed to himself. "Yeah right, like Naraki would ever teach me anything useful when I wanted to learn it. It's always 'next week, Kurokawa-kun' when I ask."

Hikari was quiet, and Bakura leveled him with a look.

"Yeah, I'm thinking it too," Bakura said. "Something about Naraki is… weird. I don't know if he's just a bad teacher or what, but…"

"It seems like he's hiding something from you?" Hikari said. His color darkened. "I've been thinking it for a while, but I wasn't going to say it. You would have thought I worry too much."

Bakura chuckled. "You do worry too much. But if it keeps me alive then… Maybe I don't really mind so much." He smiled, maybe a little more earnestly. Hikari glowed.

It was strange. Bakura actually meant it. Usually when he said stupid things like that to someone, it was a trick to manipulate them into working with him for a while.

People were so gullible. Make them think you like them back the way they like you, that they're oh so useful… Usually they were just an annoyance that served a temporary purpose.

Hikari was a ghostly little wisp though, not a person per se. He really did depend on Bakura for any sort of companionship. He _needed_ Bakura. That kind of weakness usually pissed Bakura off.

But Hikari was different somehow. Something genuine without being cheesy. Bakura did like Hikari, and maybe he did like Hikari's constant struggle to keep him alive. It was entertaining.

Hikari drifted closer still, shedding bright light over the pages. "Please, just be careful, Bakura. Shadows are dangerous, regardless of who's using them. And strangers are an unknown element we can't afford."

"True," Bakura agreed. "Strangers are definitely a bad thing."

* * *

At school the next day, the rumors were back at it once more. Bakura overheard the drama as he walked to his classroom.

It would seem that one of the coma patients had died last night, the first one in the string of suspicious patients. It was more than just brain dead. It was as though their body had simply stopped functioning. Even life support didn't seem to help.

Now, in the wake of the death, some of the other victims' families were now considering taking their loved ones off life support. The outlook seemed more bleak.

In the classroom, Yugi was already hunched over his desk. His brow was furrowed, and he scribbled on a map with an agitated look on his face. Bakura gave it a sideways look as he sat down, trying to disguise his interest.

There were several spots indicated on the map, one of them near the school. Several others were scattered throughout Domino City. Bakura even noticed a dot near where Naraki and he would practice.

Bakura thought back to last night. Hadn't Naraki mentioned that he'd put markers down all throughout Domino? Yugi was a shadowwatcher, he was trying to pin Naraki down anyway. How unreasonable was it that Yugi had found them?

Bakura busied himself with a few papers until Naraki arrived. When he saw his chance, he pulled the teacher aside, using an old homework assignment as cover. Yugi didn't even glance up.

"Yugi may have found your markers," he said quietly. "He's drawing marks on that map on his desk." Bakura listed a couple of spots that he could remember off the top of his head.

Naraki's face purpled. He bit his tongue, holding back a vicious glare at Yugi. He turned his back to the classroom so that only Bakura could see his furious expression. "Damn, he's closing in," he growled under his breath. Then he smiled. "Ahaha, but at least Miss Valentine so kindly picked them all up for me. And she thought she was being a pain."

The ribbons spilling to the ground… Mai had grabbed all those from around town.

"Still, if he knows where the markers were, he may be able to figure out who placed them there in the first place. I need to get rid of that brat, and soon. But how…?" Naraki mused.

He turned back and looked at his classroom. "Take a seat, Kurokawa-kun. Class will be starting soon."

Bakura picked his way past his other classmates. Most of them were half asleep. A few played on their phones before class started. He took his seat.

Finally, Yugi looked up, casually brushing papers over the map. He pouted. "You didn't come to my tournament," he said.

"I had to do some shopping. Couldn't find the time," Bakura lied easily.

Yugi made a disappointed noise. "Awww, but you said you'd try!"

Bakura made a face. "Are you sulking right now?" Yugi shook his head, but Bakura knew he was right. "Come on, you're in high school. Get it together, man."

Yugi shrugged, his lower lip still jutting out. "Well, it was really popular. Grandpa said it was the best turnout he'd ever seen. We're going to put on another one next month. Think you could make it then?"

"Don't know," Bakura said airily. "Hard to say so far out. But I'm going to hazard a guess and say 'no'."

Yugi groaned. "You're so mean, Kurokawa."

"Never said I was nice," Bakura replied, settling himself comfortably in his desk. "Be glad I'm not meaner."

But it would be silly to really try and ruin Yugi's life. The last thing he wanted was to be on Yugi's bad side when the kid held his future in his hands. With that demon lurking around somewhere, who knew what Yugi did and didn't know? Bakura didn't have a death wish. Not yet, anyway.

Bakura pursed his lips, glaring down at the surface of his desk. He needed to know more about demons.

Naraki said that most shadow users had demons or avatars serving them. That would explain why Yugi had a demon in the first place. But it didn't explain the reasons why they would have them, or what benefits they could provide for shadow users.

Yugi was snooping around. Gathering proof, or evidence, or something. What it was or why, Bakura wasn't sure. But it wouldn't do for Bakura to attract attention to himself either.

There was another question that was bugging Bakura as well, an itch at the back of his mind that had lurked there for a while.

Bakura waited until all of the students left the classroom. It took a while, their chattering dragging on long past when Bakura could cover his slow, deliberate packing of supplies.

"Hey, teacher," Bakura called out. He shouldered his bag. Naraki eased back in his chair, twining his fingers into a steeple. He was listening. "How do you cover your tracks?"

"I told you, we have ways of hiding from the shadowwatchers. There's a few techniques for masking your presence. You already disguise your eyes and cleanse your magic, which are the first steps. What more do you want to know?" Naraki asked.

"Yugi doesn't know where we practice. How come? Surely all of that magic in there is like a beacon or something."

"Oh, it is," Naraki said wryly. "Demons are like bloodhounds when it comes to the shadows. Which is why I put up wards. They're covered up by wallpaper and rugs, but they're definitely there. It keeps everything contained.

"That's why you shouldn't practice magic anywhere except where I've put up wards. Don't want those damn watcher dogs tracking this back to us, do you?"

Bakura made a face. "No, can't say I do. Maybe I could put some up on my place, though-"

"No," Naraki said sharply. "There's too much that could go wrong, and too much time spent outside of the wards. Best not to mess with that until we can get rid of Yugi."

"But if we get rid of him, then what's the point?" Bakura asked.

Naraki drew up short, scowling. "Don't question me. There's a method to my madness."

Bakura readjusted his bag. He wouldn't be getting anything more out of Naraki today. And if he didn't back off now, he could make things harder in the future.

"Ok," he said easily. He turned around and headed out. He could feel Naraki's glare following him out the door.

He rode the train home and walked quickly back through his neighborhood. His aunt was making dinner. He tiptoed up the stairs before she could notice him.

"Bakura, you're home!" Hikari greeted. His tendrils were arranged in a way that always somehow reminded him of a smile. Maybe it _was_ Hikari's way of smiling.

"Yo, wisp," Bakura replied with a two finger wave.

"Anything exciting happen today?" Hikari asked.

Bakura rolled his eyes. "Ugh, like you wouldn't believe," he groaned. He flopped back into his desk chair. "Where do I start? Ok, so first of all my classmates are the most annoying-"

He spent a while droning on, complaining about how annoying his day had been. Eventually he got around to complaining about Yugi and Naraki and the tedium of shadow magic.

"By the way," Bakura added, "how much do you know about demons?"

Hikari shrugged. "They're not good to mess around with. I don't remember specific examples, but I know they're tricky."

"How powerful are they?" Bakura asked. "What can they do?"

Hikari bobbed back and forth, considering. "Well, different ones have different powers. Amaimonettes, Pucks, and other such demons are common. They don't generally have their own names, but they're fairly weak. Named demons usually come from one of the circles of hell and are much stronger. Ever read Dante's Inferno?"

Bakura gave him a look. "Do I look like the kind of person who's read that?"

"Just suggesting it," Hikari said. "In the book, Dante is guided by Virgil through the circles of hell, each one designated to a different sin and ruled by various demons whose duty it was to tempt, punish and bring about suffering in those that deserved it, their punishments relating to their crimes."

"So how many circles were there?" Bakura asked.

Hikari flickered hesitantly. "Nine concentric circles, each one worse than the last. Limbo, for the virtuous non believers; the second, for those who were overcome by lust; the third, gluttons; the fourth, greed; fifth, wrath. Then on is the city of Dis, guarded by fallen angels and containing the final circles: six, heresy; seven, violence; eight, fraud; and nine being treachery."

Bakura hummed, sitting back in his chair as he considered all of this. "So. Hell is real?" he asked.

Hikari shrugged. "Dante said it was. All I know is that the demons, at the very least, group themselves according to those nine circles. It could be the true organization of hell, their own personal hierarchy, or simply different breeds of demons entirely for each circle. They like our confusion and strife, so they don't usually tell humans what they do with our souls beyond making midnight snacks out of us."

Bakura grinned. "And sometimes they serve us? Seems a bit odd, doesn't it?"

Hikari shivered in the air. His color began to mottle. "They have their own reasons I suppose. Doesn't everyone?"

"Fair enough," Bakura said. He kicked back in his chair, leaning precariously on two chair legs. "Wonder what Naraki's deal is. And what he's got in that basement of his."

"Probably something similar to your attic, surely. What else could it be?" Hikari said.

Bakura chuckled under his breath. "You're the expert here. You tell me, Professor Inferno. Are we talking a dusty old broom closet full of the same kind of books that are in that cabinet upstairs? Or is this full on mad scientist laboratory?"

"Why don't you just look? Surely he's shown you all of his sanctum by now."

"Yeah right," Bakura scoffed. "If I so much as look at that door, he loses it. I mean, I could try to break in, but he probably has it all warded up-" Bakura broke off.

The gears were turning now. If Naraki wouldn't show him the basement, he could always just sneak in… Naraki didn't have to know.

"Bakura…?" Hikari asked.

"He told me he's got the place hidden and protected," Bakura said. "But I'm pretty good at sneaking into places I shouldn't, and you know a lot about magic sometimes… If I brought you there, do you think you could identify his security measures?" He rubbed his hands together. "I really want to see what's down there."

"Breaking in? That sounds illegal…" Hikari said hesitantly.

Bakura patted Hikari on the head, his hand passing right through each time. It was like bathing his palm in ice water. "There there, we're allowed inside the house, we're just sneaking into the basement. Taking a look is all. Consider it a preemptive measure so I know what to expect."

Hikari was quiet for a while. The shifting brightness and hue betrayed his whirling mind. "I probably could. But when would we do it? I'm assuming you don't want Naraki seeing you as you do this?"

Bakura grinned. "When? During school of course."

* * *

 **Next chapter should be up in a matter of days, it just needs to be edited. Apologies for the delay on this chapter. Life is super busy right now, and I've got a dozen different things all vying for my attention. Should be good soon. Thanks for the patience!**


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